Face to Face
by Oedipal Kat
Summary: When the rest of the Animorphs are captured and infested after 17, Rachel is out on her own looking for nothing but revenge. What she finds forces her to face herself. Completed.
1. R: Extinct

**[A/N: At the end of #17, everyone but Rachel, Marco, and Cassie had been captured. However, the Yeerks released them all due to the oatmeal thing. This never made sense to me. They could have infested at least one of the Animorphs then and there and no one could have stopped them. So I decided to write a fic where they _had_ done that, and this is what emerged, due to my fascination with Rachel and Taylor... Obviously, since this is before #33, they've never met Taylor (or David, for that matter, as he shows up in one of the chapters). Anyway, read on, and enjoy!]**

  
I was exhausted. Sleep hadn't come easily to me; my nightmares of Edelman and the battle the previous night had kept me awake for hours. My dreams had ranged from crazy to crazier, with sanity only in the most necessary amounts. 

For this reason, I was not expecting to ace the algebra test in the morning. 

"Cassie?" 

She glanced at me. "What?" She seemed distant, preoccupied, but not too preoccupied to notice the circles under my eyes. "Good grief, do you ever sleep?" 

"When the urge seizes me," I grunted. I stared at her and suddenly forgot my question. Her eyes seemed darker, almost haunted, maybe a little cruel. "What's wrong with you?" 

"Nightmares," she answered quietly, lowering her voice so no one in the halls would hear. "The standard... you know." 

Satisfied, I nodded, and after searching my brain for a moment I remembered what I'd meant to ask. "Have you seen Jake yet today?" 

"Jake?" Her eyebrows rose. "Why do you ask?" 

"I wanted to ask him if we had some kind of meeting today. " 

"We do," she said quickly. "I talked to him earlier, and we do. Four o'clock, my barn." 

"It never stops, does it?" I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "Man, I'm going to have nightmares for weeks. Yeerks getting in my head, going insane. Being in the pool. Morphing ant in the pool. Two really fun fears to combine, you know?" 

"Yeah." 

We were passing Chapman's office. I repressed a shudder and twisted my head to glance through the glass door and through the white blinds. What I saw made me miss a step; as I staggered against Cassie, I processed the unbelievable, horrifying sight I'd just seen.

"Jake's in there." 

Cassie gave me a quizzical look. "Kids do go see the assistant principals sometimes, Rachel." 

"Cassie, are you not getting this? The day after a huge battle Jake's in there?" 

Realization seemed to dawn, maybe a little too quickly. "Oh crap... and there's nothing we can do..." 

"What if they infest him?" 

She seemed visibly shaken. "Just get to class, Rachel. Get to class, and I'll try to find Marco. Tell him what's going on." 

"Marco? What if..." 

"Just go!" She took off running down the hall, and I stared after her. Cassie isn't a leader. She doesn't bark out orders. And she's "with" Jake. I'd expected her to be even more shocked than I... was... 

I swore, loudly, and got a few stares from teachers in the hall. Forcing a smile, I headed for the bathrooms, for that one screen window, that one chance. 

The bell rang and sent an adrenaline rush surging through me. _Run! _

I let the fear instinct take over, and I ran, ran past the students and teachers and substitutes. My books were weighing me down, slowing me down. 

Why was I running? It would just call attention... 

_Screw it, Rachel, you can't get any more attention than you're about to get! Go! _

I hit the bathroom door hard and it swung open easily beneath my scrabbling hands. I dropped to my knees, checking for the telltale shoes beneath the stall doors. What I was about to do could not have witnesses. No one to grab me before I could get all the way to... 

_Oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap._ At least, that's the censored version of what was running through my head as I dumped my books on the bathroom sink. I paused -- they had my name in them -- a giveaway -- but I was still thinking like a spy, like I still had some stealth, but that was blown. The look in Cassie's eyes made sense now. I started morphing as fast as I could. 

I always wear my morphing suit, and that's a good thing, because after this it was going to be the only piece of clothing I owned. 

Were my parents taken already? Was Marco? 

Was Tobias? 

Suddenly it all made sense. Ax had been captured. I'd seen him when I was down there in the Yeerk pool, separated from all the others. We'd rescued him, him and Jake and Tobias, but he'd been there longest. And none of us had seen it. 

Had Jake been taken then, too? Tobias couldn't have. No Yeerk could fit inside the brain of a red-tailed hawk. For the first time I could remember I thanked heaven profusely for his nothlit form. If he was still alive he hadn't seen them being taken, because the Yeerks would have killed him before they'd give him a chance to warn us. 

I'd started morphing without even realizing it. I was shrinking rapidly. I snatched in panic at the screen window, twisting it open with my now-twisting fingers. My eagle beak would do the rest. 

I am Rachel, and I am an Animorph. 

And we are now extinct. 

My mouth erupted into a curved beak. I turned, watching the door as my eyes shifted within my skull. My vision sharpened. My hearing intensified as my head shrunk down to the head of a bald eagle. 

I glanced to my left, at the wide mirror that revealed my three-foot-high form, my softball-sized head, my still-long arms. With a horrible sucking noise the arms sucked entirely into my shoulders. I fought down a scream. Morphing is never pretty, but it was going to save my life. My hands were still protruding from where my arms had been, and slowly they grew, stretching out and out to form wings. 

My hair fanned out and melted onto my back, forming gold feathers that shimmered in the overhead lights. The feathers gleamed for a moment, then darkened to brown. 

I shrank some more. My clothing was a tent around me. The morphing outfit would be preserved, but my jeans and long-sleeved shirt would be sacrificed. I flapped my way out from under the confining shirt and kicked my shoes off just as my feet stretched and sharpened into talons. 

Was it complete? Could I fly? Probably. I focused my razor-sharp gaze on the window and flew for all I was worth, slashing at the screen with my beak and tumbling out to collapse in a heap of feathers on the grass. 

For twenty seconds I lay there, breathing in shallow gasps. Then, with my eagle hearing, I heard the door open. I heard Cassie's voice. 

"She morphed!" the Yeerk screeched. "Find her! Find her! She could be anything, an insect, a spider, a... bird..." 

I lay very still for one beat of my eagle heart, then took off, flapping madly. 

"THERE! Fire! Fire now!" 

A Dracon beam sliced the air. I was fast. I wasn't that fast. My right wing was singed. I broke into a dive and banked hard, barely evading the second blast. 

"GET HER!" 

It was strange, even then, to hear my best friend screeching an order for my destruction. I felt smothered. This couldn't be happening. But then again, that had never stopped reality before. 

I struggled for altitude, then dived again. Dracon beams futilely lacerated the air. I was gone. 

_Is there enough time to find Tobias...?_ I headed for his meadow, my heart pounding. The meeting! The meeting at four o'clock. That was for him. They had Ax, and they'd get us at school, but what about him? 

The flight was a long one. Exhaustion jerked my muscles, made them move in ways I didn't want them to, random twitches... I landed in his tree. {Tobias?} 

Nothing. 

{TOBIAS!} 

{Rachel!} Ax was galloping beneath the tree. {You must come see Tobias!} 

I went completely still, and my breathing became more erratic. I didn't answer, swallowing again and again, my eagle throat dry. 

{Rachel? Is that you?} 

_Of course it's me._ I held still. _Go away, Yeerk. Go away. _

{Tobias is in the clinic, Rachel. If that's you. He's injured. Come quickly, my friend. He may be...} 

_You fake emotion well, Yeerk. He may be... a trap? A trap for me? Of course he is. Where's the _real _Tobias? _

Ax tilted his head, looking at me. His Yeerk was a good actor. But I'd figured it out, put it together, and there was no chance that was really Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill standing below me. 

It clicked in his mind suddenly. I saw the northern harrier feathers sprouting. He was going to chase me unless I hauled before he could finish morphing. 

I let go of the branch and powered my huge wings. I was on the run, and there was no time to find Tobias. 

Wherever I was going, I was going there alone.


	2. R: Acquiring

Half an hour. Forty-five minutes. An hour. An hour and fifteen. An hour and a half... my wings were cramped and I could feel them screaming for rest. I glanced over my shoulder. Nothing. Just like there had been nothing for half an hour. Ax had followed me at first. I'd led him right into another bird's territory. The bird didn't pick on me. It picked on Ax. It did, after all, know better than to take on a bald eagle.

I hoped he was dead. Ax would have hoped he was dead... Free or dead, I remembered that. All of us had said that. And yet none of us would really want to kill another, unless necessary.

Would I have killed Ax myself if I'd known this would happen? I wondered.

Jake. Jake and Cassie. Marco. Ax. My parents, definitely. Our families.

Tobias. What would happen to him? Shot down? Tricked into morphing something with a larger ear canal today, at the meeting? I could picture it. "Here, we need new battle morphs," Cassie would say. "I just got this cougar in today. We should all acquire it and test it."

It would work. I knew it would.

And I'd run, like a coward. Not that I could do anything else. But I knew I wouldn't go back to save them. I understood that, and I wasn't going to pretend that I was headed back someday. I was going to survive.

Or was I...? What could I do? Where could I go? My dad? He'd be infested too, and they'd figure that I'd go there. I racked my brain. Where to stay? I couldn't get a job. I didn't have any paperwork. I wouldn't have an address. And I'd need to morph some other human and stay in morph all the time, demorphing every two hours. Unless I wanted to be a nothlit. Which I didn't. I needed this power...

My thoughts were getting more and more jumbled. I landed and collapsed under a tree. I didn't know where I was. I'd lost track of where I was a long time ago. I could only hope they'd lost track of me. Was that realistic? No, it wasn't, but I needed some good luck.

I was helpless. I had nothing. I had no home, I had no future, I had no chance of college and no chance of a job. The facts hit me, each different idea one more jerk in the jackhammer pounding in my brain.

One more day at the mall with Cassie. One more fight with Marco. Was it so much to ask?

Apparently it was.

I had to be getting close to the limit. I closed my eyes and concentrated, letting my feathers evaporate and be replaced with my light tan skin.

_You idiot, don't close your eyes when there might be Yeerks coming._

My eyes snapped open and I sat up straight. My instincts had kept me alive this long and I wasn't about to ignore them.

Where could I sleep at night, now? Such an extraordinarily human concern, irrelevant, ridiculous, and it was the final straw. A choked sob gurgled in my half-human throat and my head fell to my deformed hands. "Ohhh..." my voice moaned. "No, no, please, no. Not now, not this. Not alone."

Who was I begging? The Ellimist?

The Ellimist! "You could have stopped this! Where were you?!" I stood up, mostly human, golden hair sprouting from a bald human head. "What am I supposed to do, Ellimist? You've told us before -- tell me now!"

Nothing. I don't know what I expected. I couldn't sanely have expected him to come when I needed him.

Rest or morph? Rest or morph? What to morph? Ant? They'd never find me, never if the searched for a million years, but I'd probably end up a nothlit. What if the ant brain took over and I never got out? What if?

I'd been wrong. I'd come back. I'd have to. I had nothing. I _was_ nothing without the war. And I...

Did not want to die, not yet.

Rest or morph?

Or lie here, for hours and hours, waiting to be found. I was no fool. Every Yeerk in the state would be looking for me. I had no money. I had no way to get anywhere. I was trapped, and in that moment I truly understood helplessness for the first time.

It actually occurred to me, for one frozen moment, to go back, acquire a human, and kill her. It would have to be a her. Several targets popped into my mind instantaneously.

What would the Yeerks not anticipate me doing? There were so many of them, they'd anticipate everything. All of them would be thinking, watching, waiting for me, wanting to be the lucky Controller who gunned me down.

Fine then. What would they be commanded to do? Stake out my house, probably my dad's apartment, too. Stake out Tobias's meadow after they got him. Or killed him. Despite myself, I shuddered. Controllers could be freed. Dead people could not.

I needed Tobias. I needed him now. I needed him to tell me it was okay. I needed Cassie to check my violence. I needed Jake to tell me what to do. I needed Ax to anticipate the Yeerks' next move and to know what they were capable of. I needed Marco to lighten the horror of what was happening. I needed all of them, there and then, to be there, and to reassure me just by being there.

_Get a grip, Rachel._

Rest or morph? I was back to the same question.

Two more minutes. Just two more minutes.

And the Yeerks were two more minutes closer. I sat up numbly. What morph? I'd rested long enough. Necessity dictated that. Eagle? They'd look for eagle. Seagull wouldn't go fast enough and I was in a forest and seagulls should not be in forests.

And slugs should not be in space ships...

"Concentrate, you idiot!" I shouted to nothingness. Birds took flight. A squirrel stared.

What morph? I couldn't think through the haze in my brain. Cassie was a Controller. Jake was a Controller. Ax was a Controller. They knew all my morphs. They knew what to expect. Where could I get new ones?

Bobcat. Were there bobcats in these woods? Twenty to thirty miles per hour. Not cheetah speed. Not even really fast. But they'd blend in. Could I...

I froze. It was impossible. It couldn't be. There was no way that I'd seen a flash of the cat through the trees. It was watching me carefully, too far away for me to make it there in a few bounds. Sure of itself, but not arrogant.

The Ellimist? Pure luck? There was no way to know. I stayed motionless, wondering how to get to it without scaring it off. It could be one of my friends... ex-friends... Controller friends... I doubted it. There was one way to find out: acquiring it. It is impossible to acquire someone else's morph.

How to get to it...

I paused. _What do bobcats eat?_ Rats? Squirrels? I was pretty sure they'd go for a shrew...

No. I was not thinking this. There was no way I was thinking this.

I was thinking this.

I began to morph, slowly, then with more confidence as my reckless plan solidified. The bobcat looked startled as I rocketed to the ground. Fur rippled over my body. I felt the tail forming behind me, felt the tiny claws slide out of my fingers. It was a quick morph after I began to focus... I bounded towards the bobcat.

It was wary, but I saw the hungry light in its eyes. It was coming towards me. It was going for it. It closed in, and I twitched, making a good moving, panicky target.

I was fearless. At long last, I was Xena. I had nothing left to live for but life itself, and if the bobcat took that, better him than a Yeerk.

I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline as the shrew's mind collided, way too late, with mine.

{Aaaaaaaah!} I turned tail and ran. Now the bobcat was getting into it. He was faster than I was.

_Plan, you idiot! Plan!_ I started demorphing, still running, still leading him. I'd thought I would be faster but as I writhed and felt my shrew legs lengthening I was just stumbling. 

I tried to control it, tried with my not-quite-Cassie skills, to stay small. For a few moments I was successful.

The bobcat was almost on me when he stopped dead. My scent was changing.

I zoomed up from the ground at warp speed and suddenly I was Rachel, my height, with a horrible shrew mouth and short fur and teeth, whiskers, a long shrew nose... I would have screamed, but the bobcat was frozen and I wanted him that way.

My fur shrank back in. My nose and mouth returned to normal. I dived.

My hand touched the coat of the bobcat just as he started to leap away. He crashed, his eyes getting the vacant look of someone not quite all there. I felt his DNA flowing into me and I breathed again. Not a trap. A real bobcat. My real bobcat.

Mine...

My plan had been insane and suicidal. And it had worked. I'd morphed at warp speed and now the exhaustion caught up with me. I sank onto the carpet of pine needles, not even knowing which way to run.

I closed my eyes and slept...


	3. R: Running Away

I woke to pitch black silence and slowly pushed myself up in the dirt, looking around. I saw the itching marks on my arms that indicated mosquitoes had taken their fill of blood. Absently, I swatted an imprudent one.

My mind raced over the events of the previous day. Previous morning. Was this even the same day? _It doesn't matter, Rachel,_ I told myself. _Eliminate the insignificant details and you have more time to worry about the other ones._

I cursed myself suddenly. Tobias would have been taken by now, taken or killed. Priority number one. Next to maybe capturing me.

_Now what? Where am I supposed to go?_

I was back to the same dilemma. At that moment, more than ever, I was aware of the way my city, state, country had been saturated with Yeerks. I was not safe anywhere. Every Yeerk in the USA would be hunting me, until they lost interest and decided I was already dead, and even then one wrong move would start up the manhunt again.

I was alone, and I could not start over.

I had no life anymore. I could not go to college. I could not finish school. I could not make money. And suddenly all of those concerns seemed hideous and mundane.

I felt the flood rushing up inside me and thought about stopping it. Hatred. Pure, concentrated, distilled hatred. There was fear somewhere at the back -- fear always drives hatred -- but at the forefront of my mind there was only a red torrent of anger and that was what I needed.

I existed only to fight Yeerks. I existed only to make them feel pain. I existed only to stop them. I understood that then. I was the destroyer. That had always been my role. I was Jake's final weapon, I was the one to send in when things got bad, I was the one at the front when we just needed an exit plowed. I had the ruthlessness. I had the lack of conscience. Maybe I just understood what would happen if the Yeerks took over, but that wasn't likely. I had rage to vent. I had a lot of rage to vent.

I was hemmed in by a perfect life, the life of an honor student, the life of a gymnast, the life of a mall rat. An ordinary life. Not a bad ordinary life, but an ordinary life all the same.

I didn't want to be ordinary. And ripping the head off a slicing Hork-Bajir is not ordinary. I wanted that drama. I wanted someone to wrench me apart just so I could know that I was _not_ one more teenager. I was a warrior. I needed to be a warrior.

And now I needed revenge. My friends had been captured or killed.

"I probably can't save them," I said aloud, "but I can avenge them. I can make the Yeerks know they didn't get all of us. I can make them know they haven't won. I can... I can give hope..."

I was babbling, but in my mind an image of me rose, exalted, triumphant. Visser Three crying for mercy. Me standing proud before allowing the very Taxxons he had once commanded to devour him. Me on the throne of the Yeerk pool --

What? I came back to reality suddenly. I didn't want to rule Yeerks. I wanted to kill them.

Right?

I wanted power. I would not die just another kid.

_Get a grip._ Not for the first time in the last day, or two days, I felt disgust for myself. _What's the plan, Rachel? You don't plan. Jake plans. Now you have to plan._

I couldn't stay in this town. I had to move fast. And I had to blend in.

_How far do I go?_

Later. Worry about it later. Now, just move.

I concentrated. Even with everything going on, I was looking forward to the new morph, the new cat, the new predator. Not a very big predator, but still a predator. I thought of those claws and, probably because I was focusing on them, they suddenly slid out of pads that formed at the tips of my fingers.

"Cool," I said approvingly. My words were slurred by the appearance of teeth in my still-human mouth. The teeth were too long and bit sharply into my gums, but I was dead to the pain. I didn't care. Or maybe I enjoyed it.

My face slanted, nose shrinking down parallel to my mouth, pointing like a line from my eyes to a point slightly in front of my human feet. Not human for long. They seemed to bubble, and out of the changing skin fur sprouted. Claws armed my toes mere seconds before my legs changed direction and I hit the ground on all fours.

My mouth opened in a horrific grin. I enjoyed thinking about what I looked like, crouching down with long blonde hair sweeping the dirt and a snarling, toothy mouth below hate-filled eyes... My jaw shifted into a more felinoid one, ruining the image.

It's impossible to make a cat morph too gross. That's part of why I like them.

A horrible wave of loneliness hit me hard. I needed them there...

A short tail, only about four inches long, formed just as my hair gently withered up into my skull like strands of spider-silk being sucked in. And, finally, last of all, the fur that had started at my feet swept up me like a gust of wind.

I was ready to run.

Thirty miles per hour is not a blazing speed. I've been an eagle in a dive. That would have made this look commonplace. But it was good, it would serve my purpose.

Where to go? Rural area or close city?

City. Get a human morph -- I didn't care if I was using a sentient creature; my moralist friend was not there to stop me -- and blend in, coming out of hiding only long enough to strike harsh blows.

_And what harsh blows can one human girl strike? Or one grizzly? Or one elephant?_

I ignored myself.

A rural area... would it be harder or easier to find me? Easier if they knew what to look for, harder if they didn't. But I was drawn to the city. It energized me, the throngs of people moving all around, the people to show off for, the people to give me the spotlight, the people who made me me.

_All right, Rachel. Get to the edge of the woods and remorph. Remorph... what..._ More planning! I wanted to _act_. This wasn't my niche, but I had no choice.

Seagull. Seagull went anywhere.

How far was I from where I wanted to be? I had no idea. I retreated slightly and used the bobcat mind to figure it out. People. People were south. People were pretty far south, yes, but the bobcat didn't like south. I did.

I took off.

Bobcats weigh about twenty pounds. They can move around twenty to thirty miles per hour, maybe thirty-five on a good day. I took advantage of the speed, plotting things in my head. I wasn't good at planning details, but I, like everyone, could plot the perfect little endings. Cassie and Jake and Marco and Ax, all freed. The Yeerks exposed. Tobias...

I wondered if he was dead. Probably not. They wouldn't want him dead. But they'd kill him if they didn't have another choice.

What would happen to the Chee? The Chee. I could use the Chee. That would help. But the Yeerks would be on them instantly. Would a few make it away? Like Erek?

There would be time to worry about that later. My muscles kept going, moving me in powerful leaps towards where the bobcat mind had told me civilization was. Real civilization, not the suburbs.

I couldn't go on like this. I was alone. Awesomely alone. And I would always be alone until I could free my friends. Realism crashed like a tidal wave. Me against the Yeerk Empire? That wasn't going to last long.

_Just run, Rachel. Run and don't think._


	4. R: Fluffer McKitty

In seagull morph, I wheeled, watching people. The seagull mind was under control; I had it under such a tight grip I hardly noticed the bags of junk food, the spilled candy, the overturned nachos in the parking lots...

Okay, so I lied.

I felt disconnected from my own body, as if I was watching a TV special -- admittedly, remarkably real -- on the horrible tragedy that had happened to someone else. Anyone else. I let the seagull mind sweep me away and swooped down, landing neatly beside a McDonald's burger, half-eaten, wrapped in its pretty yellow wrapper... my beak darted into the meat quickly. I lost myself.

_Wake up, Rachel._

Disgusted, I opened my wings again and swooped up. What to do, where to go. Hmm. City. Human morph, it had to be a morph, I couldn't be me. What now... Who to acquire? My thoughts were distracted. A shudder ripped savagely through me, through my body, through the small white form with the acrobatic dark wings. Not like red-tailed wings, not like Tobias's wings.

My Tobias.

_Stop it!_

The mall. It was a big mall, bigger than our mall. This was a city, after all. I headed there.

I needed clothes. Even if I found a human morph, I'd need clothes. That was a problem. I had no money.

What fits in in a mall parking lot? I needed to make friends with a human, a human I could later acquire. What kind of animal would a human take home? The answer was obvious to me. A human would take Fluffer McKitty home.

Melissa. Cassie. Jake. Marco. Names hit me like a flood. That mission. Chapman, Visser Three.

_Get a grip!_ I roared at myself. I plunged towards the dumpsters behind the mall. _Feel pain, you simpering twit! You're weak! You need them, you know you need them, get a grip!_

_Feel pain!_

I hit the pavement in a seagull dive. I felt my bones give way. That was okay. I was going to demorph anyway. But for a moment I lay there, punishing myself, feeling the ferocious pain vibrating through my bones. My broken bones. This would have killed me if I couldn't demorph. _This is the price of weakness, Rachel._

I looked around me. I was sheltered behind the Dumpsters. Good place to change morphs. Well, not good, but better than being out in the middle of the parking lot.

I demorphed. The process was quick and my mind was elsewhere. I was almost surprised when I felt my blond hair sway against my cheek. I'd expected feathers.

_I really am losing it... Xena, you can't lose it._ I chuckled to myself. _Xena. Yeah, I'll be Xena. Those Yeerks will remember Xena for a long, long time._

Quick morph back to cat, I coached myself. Do it now.

Finished, I reared my kitty head and felt the grace as I moved. Running. Running for an entrance.

Everything seemed to be moving too fast. My brain was still back there in the school bathroom, groping at the screen window, crying silently, waiting to morph or die. A kitty? A kitty in a parking lot? How did I get here?

Now to pose. I almost laughed at the insanity of my own plan. Run across a parking lot, try not to get hit, get a human to adopt me, morph that human, live. Fail any of those and die.

I hid out under a parked car for a few moments, silently falling apart. Remembering things. Remembering fun.

_"Squuuuaaaakkk! Amazon burgers are made with cat meat!" I chirped cheerfully, ruffling my orange and yellow feathers. Then, for effect, I added another "Squuuuaaaakkk!" It felt like a spelling bee -- "Squawk, s-q-u-a-w-k, squawk."_

I was enjoying myself. Beside me, Marco was enjoying himself, too. "Squuuuaaaakkk! Try our spaghetti with hair!"

Our mission: To free the parrots. It felt good to take a break from killing things and save a few, even if it was an environmentally crazed mission. The birds were smart and they deserved to be rescued. The Animorphs were just the crazy kids to do it.

I could see cars whizzing by all around me, searching for a parking space. Girls heading to the entrance, blond girls, girls like me, girls with sparks in their blue eyes and a boyfriends' arms on their shoulders.

No, no, not like me. My boyfriend had wings. If he was even that. How can a girl belong to a bird?

I stumbled out from under the car, doggedly trying to escape my own thoughts. They tagged along behind me, twirled through my head, shoved me forward --

Leaning on the horn! Someone. Who was it? Was it my mother? She always leaned on the horn too much --

_Squeal!_ A gust of wind hit me as a car swerved past, its tires shrieking from the too-sharp curve. I stared after it stupidly. Then it hit me: I wasn't in the Amazon Cafe anymore. I was almost in the Roadkill Cafe.

"Oh, poor kitty!" The girl had stopped the car and stepped out, and with my cat senses I could tell she was coming off an adrenaline high. She picked me up, stroking my black-and-white fur. "What are you doing here? Parking lots aren't good places for kitties," she crooned. "No collar? No tags? Are you a stray?"

My plan was coming together through sheer dumb luck. "Mew?" I asked pathetically.

"Ohh, you are?" She was still crooning. "You need a good meal," she added, despite the fact that since my DNA was taken from a housecat I was the picture of nutritional health. I let out a pitiful little yowl and scrabbled weakly, like cute stray cats do.

She deposited me on the leather seat of her car. I looked at her. She was maybe eighteen, a few years older than I. Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. Tall, thin. Beautiful. I saw a glimmer of myself in her features, and for a moment it confused me, like I was supposed to know her. The kind of vibe you get off people who you know you'll see again, or are supposed to see again. I don't believe in New Age crap but I got a chill or two anyway.

"What's your name, Kitty?" She smiled, glancing at me. I could see a few Limited bags in the back seat. She had taste.

My first instinct was to answer her, sadly enough. I was a cat, I didn't have to answer.

"How about... Hawk?" She chuckled quietly. "Hawks are predators too. Like you. Only they can fly." Another smile, perfect smile, perfect teeth. "I'd love to fly."

I wanted to ask her name. She was fascinating. A kind of intelligence lurked in her blue eyes, a certain sharpness in her gaze. Nothing overt, just in the background, taking a backseat to her gold hair and charming smile.

She reminded me of me. I shuddered, like I had in seagull morph.

"You're Hawk," she confirmed, having evidently thought it over. She glanced at me and the corners of her full lips tugged upwards. "And I'm Taylor."

[**A/N: Thanks for the constructive criticisms on the cheetah/blue box thing. I did fix those. ^^ If you assume I'm going to get the chronology wrong since I mentioned Taylor, please don't. I do have a plan and hopefully I won't be an idiot with it. Thanks.**] 


	5. T: If I Wasn't Me

[_A/N: Thanks go to Mel (Anisky) and Rick (Prometheus) first off. The plot that will unfold in the next few chapters would not be possible without either one of you. Here's to the good old days, guys. ^^_]

I yawned as the light of morning hit me moments after the blare of my alarm clock. Fumbling, I managed to cut off the screaming demon and relax into peace again. The peace wouldn't last long. That had been the third or fourth time I'd hit the snooze button.

"'M up," I muttered, and the previous day quickly jumped into my mind. I had a cat. I had a new cat. I'd always wanted a cat. Now I had a cat. Laughing at my one-track mind, I sat up, letting the sun from the floor-to-ceiling window on one side of my bedroom hit me like a wall of light. I felt more alive instantly -- not that a shower couldn't raise my alertness a notch. School. Had to think about school, even if I did have a new cat.

I felt vaguely guilty. What if it had belonged to someone? _Oh well,_ I reasoned. _Careless to let the cat wander in a parking lot without tags anyway._ I knew there could be other explanations for it being loose there even if it did have a caring owner, but my excuse made me feel better.

Where was the cat, anyway? I opened the doors of my huge closet and saw it lying there, blinking up at me with its cool green eyes. For a moment, I wondered how a cat could get into a closed closet...

"Ohhh, did I shut you in there?" I dropped to my knees and lifted the cat, who I'd titled Hawk, into my arms. "I'm sorry, kitty."

It purred softly, and I determined that it was in a forgiving mood. Something about this whole thing felt wrong, but I attributed it to the fact that I'd gaily snatched a cat out of a parking lot and adopted it within a few moments. My parents didn't care, of course. My parents didn't really care about much.

They had money. They had much money. Thus, by the laws of the household, so did I. But they made that money by working constantly, and they weren't home that much. Fine by me. I liked the freedom.

"School," I told the cat, scratching the side of its chin. I brought the little bundle of joy downstairs and quickly fixed it a meal. Chicken would do until I had a chance to pick up actual cat food. I'd do that after school. I berated myself -- should have done it last night.

Leaving the cat to its food, I jogged up the stairs back to my room. When I finished my shower and picked out an outfit, refreshed and awake, I sat down on my bed. The standard wave of loneliness hit me. It always hit me in the mornings. Something about looking out my window, seeing all the beauty of the city and the sky, that moved me somehow. I wanted someone to share it with. Stupid, huh? I didn't want to wake up alone. That was what it came out to. I didn't want to _be_ alone.

But I wasn't really alone, or at least I wouldn't be by the time I drove my sportscar to the school. There were always two or three of my friends waiting for me, and Keith was always there too, with his multimillion dollar smile and the arm ready to reach around my shoulders. I looked forward to that. I had friends, and that was what mattered.

Keith was what mattered.

I headed downstairs and out the door. No need to say goodbye to my parents. They knew where I was going, anyway. I slid my key into the ignition, feeling the engine rev as the flashlight on my keychain jingled against the dangling keys. I rolled one window down and let my elbow hang slightly out of it. With practised ease, I slid my sunglasses down over my eyes and straightened my hair.

It was all an act, of course. All a diseased, ten-minute photo shoot, the drive to the school being one long pose for anyone that saw me. I was beautiful. I didn't get high off the fact, most of the time, but I knew that if I looked... different... more than half of my life would change, be suddenly and irrevocably missing. I was confident and self-assured, but only because I saw that girl in that rear view mirror and knew that she was gorgeous. That I was gorgeous.

Sometimes I wonder. Would my friends still be my friends if I was five inches shorter and pudgy? Would Keith still be waiting with a grin if my hair was frizzy and out of place? Would every guy in the hall try to make eye contact if my teeth were wearing braces when I smiled? I guess I don't wonder, really. I know. I know it wouldn't be like this.

But I don't care. Because it _is_ like this, and that's all that matters. Or so I tell myself when the sportscar leaves the three-car garage and speeds out onto the road. And maybe, maybe if it's a good day, I can deceive myself a little, too, and convince the skeptic in my head that Keith would look at me the same if every outfit wasn't the latest in designer fashion. But you deal with what is, you know?

All the same... maybe I'm a little nicer to the "nobodies" of the school than the others of my clique. Maybe I'm not as bitingly sarcastic to the girls with faded skirts they've been wearing for three years. Maybe I'm not as cold to the wannabe-popular kids trying out for the teams to make a name for themselves. And maybe that's because I'm jealous, because the kids there have real friends, and if people care about them now it really is because they _see_ them, not...

I think too much. Everyone's always said it and I've known it's true. I analyze everything and I don't take the good at face value. There's always a catch.

I noticed a fly buzzing around the window of the passenger side. I rolled it down sympathetically, now getting a crossbreeze from my open window to that one, but to my surprise, the little insect didn't take its exit.

After leaving it open for two miles and watching the bug stubbornly cling to the position it had taken as soon as the window had rolled open, I shrugged. "Your loss," I informed it, pulling into the parking lot. "Starve in there. Fine by me."

I checked my watch. Right on time. The fly zoomed out behind me right as I closed the door. Apparently it had changed its mind after all. 


	6. T: The Crash

I moved for my locker. Sandra and Jessie were already there. I smiled as I twisted my somewhat temperamental lock. "Hey, guys."

"Hey, Taylor," Jessie chirped in her permanently cheerful tone. "Did you finish Morris's essay?"

"Of course." I opened my binder and quickly located the double-spaced printout of an English essay that had taken me way too much time last night.

Sandra lightly banged her head on the locker next to mine and said a few colorful words our Honors English teacher would not have liked us to use.

"So what you're saying is... you forot?" Jessie deadpanned. "You still have one class to do it in."

She got a glare. "Waste my Theater Arts class waxing eloquent about some random line Morris plucked out of a book?"

"Or not." Jessie shook her head solemnly. "I should know better by now."

I dropped my backpack in the locker and fished out my Pre-Calc book. Checking for my first period homework, I added, "Sandra, did you at least do th--"

"No, probably not, whatever you're going to say, and I'm not going to," she interrupted with a defiant sulk. "Any extra time I have between classes will be spent on the essay." She raked one hand through her dark hair. "I'm going to head off, get a good seat, start working on it before class."

Jessie nodded. "I should go, too. See you, Taylor."

I waved goodbye maybe a little too eagerly, having just spotted Keith heading towards me. He slung his arm around my shoulders and kissed me quickly on the cheek. "Hey, beautiful."

I probably should have felt a quick rush of my previous insecurities, but all I really felt was happiness. He loved me, and even if it was for my hair, my body, my face, I didn't care.

I needed to hear him say it. I drew back a step and smiled coyly up at him. "Love me?"

"You know it." He offered his arm. "I'll walk you to class."

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw that fly again. I shifted uneasily, trying to shake off an undefinable fear.

When we reached the classroom, I kissed Keith goodbye and took a seat. _Is it my imagination or is that fly still following me? Wait -- it must be. It's leaving._ I felt relief.

"Hey, Taylor."

I looked up. "Hey, Brent. What's up?"

He grinned mischievously, which is possibly the only way Brent knows how to grin. "Cool stuff," he said in a low voice. "You up for a little fun?"

"Mm.. Yeah." Distractedly, I scanned the other two students Brent had motioned over to my desk. "Hey, Patrick. Hey, Mike. Okay, Brent," I said, turning back to him. "What's going on?"

"Did you hear about that crash in the town over?"

"Crash? Like an accident?"

His grin widened. "An accident, all right. The media's scrambling to cover it up. They're doing really good, too -- so good that none of you have even heard about it."

"Like I have time to keep up with every car wreck that happens anyway?" Patrick said, arching a brow.

Brent smirked. "Wasn't a car."

"Then what was it?" snapped Mike. "I have homework I didn't do. I could be doing it now. Don't waste my time."

"Alien spacecraft," Brent said nonchalantly. The nonchalance was ruined by the glint in his eyes.

Mike snorted rudely and moved away, shaking his head. Patrick stayed. "Tell me more," he said grandly, assured as usual of his own importance and the honor he conferred on Brent by listening.

"I'll be brief." Brent was not in the least let down by Mike's stalking off. "Two months ago. Alien spacecraft. Go boom. Media scrambles, but not to cover it. To cover it up. No tabloids get it. The media says some kids shot off fireworks. Right."

"Hey, how'd _you_ find out about this if _National Enquirer_ can't?" I demanded. "Oh, yeah, and what are you _on_?"

Brent ignored me for the moment. "I checked: the spacecraft's gone --"

"How convenient," I interposed.

"--but I want to go look and see if the little clean-up crew left anything." He shrugged his linebacker shoulders. "And it's just no fun alone."

"You're high," I said flatly. "I have stuff to do."

"Yeah? Keith already said he was in. And that he thought it would be fun if you came."

A smile spread over my lips. "Then I'm there." As an afterthought, I added, "But you're still high." 


	7. R: Trapped

I buzzed around, annoyed, trying to find my way back to Taylor's classroom as a remorphed fly. After much futile searching, I found her, just as a guy was moving away from her desk with a grin on his face. Making a quick decision, I zipped into the tiny space between the spirals and pages of her notebook. I froze there, hoping she hadn't seen me.

She hadn't. I relaxed.

I couldn't believe the plan I was considering. Sadly, what I could not believe was that no one was around to stop me. Live with Taylor. Observe her. Learn her personality, her mannerisms, how to pass as her, and then...

It's a cold world, you know. We Animorphs had tried to stay decent in a war that had no room for decency in it. And they were Controllers, and Tobias was probably dead, and if I alone survived I was going to survive for a while.

I was tough. What I was going to do would tear me apart for a while, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that I lived, lived to fight the Yeerks who had already destroyed everything.

I was under no illusions. I wasn't going to stop them. I was just going to take down as many as I could with me.

And I resented Taylor. I resented her because, for some unnamed reason, for the first time in my life, appearance mattered to me. Was I as beautiful as that future prom queen? Did I draw those same stares? I recoiled from my own shallow thoughts, but I know that there were enough similarities in us to make me competitive. I tried not to think about it, but the resentment was still there, festering.

So maybe that just made it easier to do what I had to do anyway.

I dreaded the moment when I had to kill her. I wanted to do it in her sleep... I did have a conscience, after all, just not a very active one.

I watched her all day, except for the breaks I took to demorph. And I learned something about this girl: she knew how shallow beauty was. She knew why her boyfriend smiled at her. She knew why her friends enjoyed her company. She knew that her name was next to synonymous with popularity and that everyone around her basked in the light that came with that name.

She knew. And she didn't care.

_What if you weren't beautiful?_ I asked the tall, pretty senior below me. _What if you weren't... me?_

I followed her relentlessly, filing away the way she twisted her hair, the way she laughed, the way she got the attention of whoever she spoke to with a soft touch on the arm and a coy smile. I learned her like I would a textbook. I learned to imitate her the way a Yeerk learns to imitate its host. And all the while, I felt my resolve whittling itself away. My victim already had a name, and now, by careful observation, I had given her a personality.

Then I thought of Cassie. My best friend had had a personality too. Because of the Yeerks, she was now nothing more than a body to make use of.

I was going to avenge that -- no matter what. But to do that, I needed a way to stay alive, a --

_Body to make use of?_ I hesitated at the thought. Not for long, though. I'd been tailing her longer than I'd thought. It was 3:30. My last demorph had been at 2:00. A half hour. Taylor was heading out to her sleek car, ready to go home.

I'd timed it before. The drive was a ten minute one. That left twenty minutes... which was cutting it close, but there was no time to remorph again. I felt the mother of all jolts as Taylor tossed her backpack, currently my hiding place, onto the passenger seat of her car. I felt uneasy as I carefully avoided being crushed by the books. There was no way out if the time limit passed while I was in there. I wouldn't fit if I tried to demorph. And even if I half-morphed, how could I work a zipper from the inside?

In a flash, I realized my mistake. No kid goes home and immediately opens a backpack!

I screamed in agony within the isolation of my own mind. Fly! Fly! No, not fly -- grizzly, elephant, something, no! Something that could hurt the Yeerks! Something that could see without the fragmented vision of compound eyes! Something... _not fly_!

Tick. Tick. I could almost feel the seconds brushing my body as they passed, beating me, ironing my exoskeleton on, a skin I could never remove. Like an outfit I could never remove. Haha, Rachel, you're never going to try on another shirt. Another pair of jeans. A demented giggle. Had it been out loud? Had Taylor heard? What if she had, did it matter? Giggle. She could crush me. She will crush me. No one likes flies.

The time passed. She had heard nothing. Tick, tick. Had it been ten minutes yet? _Who cares? What difference does time make now?_

What a way to die... what a way to live... I giggled again, silently. Tick, tick. _This is who I am. This is who I always will be. Listen to it, Rachel..._

Tick, tick. 


	8. T: Tonight at Six

I tossed the bookbag onto the passenger seat and fished my sunglasses out of the glove compartment. Hmm. A little mood music. Jamming my key into the ignition, I started the car up. My long fingers flicked the radio to WAV Rock and the familiar sounds of "How You Remind Me" filled up the car. "This is how you remind me of what I really am -- this is how you remind me of what I really am..." I sang along, and the song sounded a little haunting when my voice chimed in. _What am I, anyway?_ I stopped singing and got ready to drive.

"Hey, Taylor! Wait up!"

Soft groan. I knew that conspiracy-freak voice. I rolled down my window and cut off the radio. "Unh?" I demanded, in the most lady-like way possible.

"Construction site, tonight," he informed me. He was nearly bouncing with excitement. "Patrick's in. Keith's in. You're in. Let's go!"

"Awfully fired up about this, aren't you?" I sighed and perched my sunglasses on the top of my head. "You're sure Keith's going to be there?"

"Absolutely. He promised. So you have to come." He leaned on the car door. "Anyway, how come you'll only come if he does? Aren't I good enough?"

"Hahaha. Wait, not joking?" I grinned anyway. "You're not my type."

His expression became serious. "Taylor, sometimes friendship's worth a little time too, you know? We've been friends for years but it's like I don't know you anymore. You don't come near me if Keith isn't around."

I shifted. "I'm busy."

"Not too busy for him."

"Of course not. He's my boyfriend."

"Oh, so screw all your other friends?"

"What time do I have to be there, Brent?" I snapped.

"Six. Don't be late. Eat early. If you even eat." He threw an appreciative glance at my thin figure, then reddened a little and brought his eyes back up to my face.

Uncomfortable, I retorted, "That's not funny."

"Mm. Isn't supposed to be."

"Are you done?"

"I guess I have to be. It's not like you have time for me anyway. Sorry I took up this much of it."

I hit the window button and he yelped in surprise as the glass shot up, taking his arm with it. I paused. "Remove your arm from my car, or my car will remove your arm."

He looked disgusted as he jerked his hand back. "See you tonight, Taylor."

"Goodie."

_Press the brake. Move the gear shift. Let up the brake. Back out. Good._ I wondered why I was thinking myself through this. I turned the radio back on and pulled out onto the road. Brent had rattled me. What about it had rattled me?

Did he mean anything by any of it? Did he care about me? I snorted. Tough luck for him if he did.

_Way to be a good friend, Taylor._

"'S not my fault if he has a crush on me," I muttered out loud.

Before I could figure out exactly why I was talking to myself, the backpack I'd thrown on the passenger seat started... rustling. I went still, taking my eyes off the cement in front of me. They rested on the shaking bag. "What the hell --" The zipper started sliding back, and I had a flash of two black, mutated sticks clutching it. There was just nothing to do but scream, so I did. I closed my eyes and screamed as loudly as I could and realized -- when the car's front wheels thudded onto a curb -- that maybe, just maybe, closing my eyes was a really bad idea.

Trembling, I clutched at the strap of the backpack and jerked it hard. "Come out of there!" I yelled. "Get out!"

Nothing. The bag stopped shaking, the top of it now open. I parked the car in an empty driveway and jumped out. I grabbed the bookbag and threw it at the cement.

{_Oww_!}

I froze, then kicked at the black fabric. "Get out of my bookbag!"

A fly that must have landed nearby, unnoticed in my terror-crazed distraction, buzzed away from the bag. I ignored it. I had bigger problems. Summoning all my courage, I jerked the bag open and stared in.

Nothing. "WHERE ARE YOU!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I threw it against the ground, once, twice, three times. I slammed my foot down on the crumpled heap of fabric, books, and paper that remained. "Out! Out! Out!" I wondered if I was squishing some mutated creature beneath my designer shoes. I wonder if I was getting guts all over my homework. I screamed again, less coherently this time.

A little more tapdancing. A little more hollering. A little more frustration. "GET THE FLAMING FU--"

"Excuse me, ma'am?"

Very slowly, I stepped off my bookbag. Very slowly, I turned to face the elderly man standing on his porch, shading his eyes from the sun with a shaking hand.

"Uh. Yessir?"


	9. R: David

"Let's go, let's go." Brent was practically bouncing with energy. "Let's go!"

Taylor sighed and smoothed a stray tendril of hair behind her ear... exactly the way I always did. A cold shudder went through me, even though my fur protected me from the night air. Fortunately, my human "owner" hadn't noticed yet that her new cat was trailing her. That was partially due to my stealth in morphing from fly to human to cat and sneaking up behind her and her clique with absolute silence. It was partially due to the fact that Brent hadn't shut up yet and there was no way anyone could focus on anything else.

When I'd heard him mention the construction site in the car, even through my terror at the prospect of life as a fly, I'd been a bit freaked out. Other people were checking out the construction site. Ridiculously, I thought of it as _our_ construction site. No one else had a right to be there. I felt vaguely protective of the spot where the Andalite had died.

Also, it was way too close to my town. I shuddered at the thought of Controller-Cassie prowling around in owl morph. Her eyes would spot me, and her talons would rip me apart.

"Hey, there's a kid," the one named Patrick observed. His red hair glinted in the street lights as he leaned forward, resting his palms on his knees. "What's he doing? He's holding something. Looks blue."

"Looks like... hey, what is that thing?" demanded another boy, slinging one arm around Taylor's shoulders as the group stopped walking.

Taylor giggled a little and leaned her head against his shoulder, then strained her eyes to see in the darkness. "It's a box, Keith," she announced. "I can make out the outline."

My head whipped around. _Box?!_

"Let's see what it is," Brent said, breaking into a jog. He raised his voice. "Yo!"

The kid's head snapped up and he took a step back. "Who's there?" he shouted.

"Us," said Patrick easily, stepping into the glare of a streetlight. He smirked. "Don't worry, kid, not looking to mug ya or anything. Just let me see the box."

He withdrew another step. "It's mine," he said, a little sulkily.

Taylor caught up with them. "Hey, back off, Patrick," she ordered. "What's your name, kid?"

"David."

"Cool. Nice to meet you, David." Yes, Taylor was definitely the one in the group with the social skills. "Can I see the box?"

"Duh, were you not listening? No. It's mine."

"Give us the box, kid." Keith looked bored. "We're definitely bigger than you, probably older than you, and I'm willing to bet even Taylor here could take you down." He indicated Taylor with a thumb, and smiled at her a little. His smile faded as he looked back at the kid. He grabbed his arm and pulled him into the light. "Give it, Davey-boy."

My heart beat quickly twice, then stopped. The light gleamed on the dusty surface of the cube. There was no way I could fail to recognize it.

I sat down, very quickly, just plopped my kitty hindquarters in the dirt and stared.

"Don't be a jerk, Keith." Brent looked annoyed. "He can't be older than what, a sophomore?" It sounded about right. My age. "That puts us two years older than him. And there are four of us."

"What do you want me to do, tie my wrists behind my back to make it fair?" Keith snapped. "It's not my fault he's a wussy little boy."

"Hey. Excuse me, the wussy little boy is standing right here," David barked. "You're going to talk about me, then talk to me. The wussy little boy might negotiate here."

"We don't need you to negotiate, kid," Patrick retorted. "We can take the thing."

"Hey! Guys!" Taylor waved her arms. "Maybe I'm just more rational, being a girl, but it's a freakin' toy box. Let it go."

_No no no,_ I prayed. _I need Taylor to get that! I need it! I can't tail this David kid. I have a plan. Don't screw it up for me!_

It didn't look like luck was on my side. The David kid was going to walk off with the box, and they were going to let him. Keith turned away and grinned apologetically at Taylor, a little like a scolded puppy. Brent shrugged, more focused on his search for the remains of the alien ship -- ironically -- to care about a "freakin' toy box." Patrick just looked disgruntled.

David slunk back. I stood up. No way was I going to let this happen. I sprang into action and trotted along after him, then paused in a dark corner and began my demorph.

It was quick. My mind was elsewhere, and I was almost surprised to suddenly find myself a human girl crouched in the shadows of a dark construction site. I felt out of place. I was out of place. That was okay. What I was about to become would be even more out of place.

Grizzly claws sprouted from my hands. Grizzly fur rippled over me. Grizzly teeth, too large for my puny human mouth, bit into my gums.

{Oh, Daaaa-vid!} I sang in private thought-speech, lumbering up behind him in a half-morphed form. {Look behiiiiind you!}

He did. What he saw made him scream. The box hit the ground with a thud, and he was off, running, screaming, waving his arms. _Perfect._

I instantly began demorphing, loping back to my hiding place against the wall. The screams would draw Taylor and the boys back. All I had to worry about was tailing them home, and making sure _Taylor_, not one of them, got custody of the box. That should be easy. Patrick and Keith were idiots, thugs, and Brent wouldn't recognize it as being what he was after.

Cat. Cat. I focused all my drained willpower on the DNA of Fluffer McKitty swimming within me. I felt myself start shrinking.

_I wonder what would have happened if David had ended up with the box...?_

I shrugged twisting shoulders. _Not like it matters now._


	10. T: Something More

I heard an ear-splitting scream and whirled around a split second after Brent. A grin stretched across his lips and he took off at a run. Patrick was a millimeter behind him, egged on by his own fear, waiting for something more to happen. Patrick's always waiting for something more to happen. I think this life bores him, sometimes.

Sometimes I feel the same way. But I'm more cautious, I guess, and so I shot Keith a worried look as we stared after our comrades. "Sounded like the kid. I wonder what happened."

"Not going to find out by standing here, now, are we?" he shot back, breaking into a sprint. I had no choice but to follow, but it occurred to me that next time it might not be best to come to a construction site after the sun set. I shivered as I jogged behind. It had to be six thirty now, and the fall air was crisp and cold. I wished I'd worn something heavier than a windbreaker. I increased my stride and caught up to Keith and the others.

"He dropped the box," Keith said with satisfaction, picking it up.

Patrick looked over Keith's shoulder, and his brow furrowed. He took it. "Look at those symbols. They don't look like any language I know."

"You don't know any language," I pointed out. "Heck, you flunked Spanish I."

He shot me a dirty look. "Look at them, Taylor. That's not exactly our alphabet."

I glanced over. "So? Could be Russian. Greek. Hebrew. Arabic. Could be Flontusian, for all I know. Can we move on now? That kid sounded scared, and if there's an axe murderer running around, I for one don't wait to be in the way."

"Flontusian?" demanded Patrick dryly.

"You know. The country of... Flontuce." In the laugh-less silence that followed, I pointed upwards, diverting their attention from my stale joke. "Hey, look at that! An owl. Cool. It's beautiful."

"Not all of us are birdwatchers, Taylor."

"Shove it, Patrick."

"This could be from the ship," Brent said thoughtfully, ignoring us and looking at the box with an unusually solemn expression. "Maybe this is exactly what I'm looking --"

"Sirens!" Patrick's expression went from sardonically interested to alert and eager in an instant. "Move! Move! Move!"

His eyes were on fire. I caught a glimpse of them as I rocketed towards the shadows. He looked alive, so much more alive than I'd ever seen him. It's a clumsy description, but he looked like a warrior, something too dramatic to call any teenage kid.

He rested his palms on his knees again, like he had a few minutes before. "Taylor, Keith, Brent. You guys head for the north exit from this place. Keith's car is there. Take it and go."

I raised both eyebrows, annoyed by what a big deal they were making out of this. "What about my car?"

"Keith will drop you off at your car. Brent, you're with Keith, since you came with me. For now, get out of here."

"What about you?"

"I'll be fine, Brent. I'm going to lead them away." He tossed the box to me. "Keep that at your house until... until something. I don't know what."

I stared. "Patrick, you're insane. Those are cops. Not bad guys. _Cops._"

"Why do they show up right now, then? What's gone wrong in this area? Any murders you've heard of? Why are cops mobbing an abandoned construction site?"

"_Mobbing?_ How can you tell how many there are?"

"Listen to the freakin' sirens!" he snapped, losing patience. "I have a bad feeling about this. And I need this, I swear I do. I need to lead them away. It doesn't matter who they are." His eyes pleaded with us to understand. With me to understand.

I didn't. "You're high," I said flatly.

"You say that a lot," Brent observed. "But he's right. Space ship, media coveruppage, if that's a word. I have a bad feeling too. Let's go."

"We can't leave him!" I protested as Brent grabbed my arm. "And the Dave kid --"

"Stop right there!" an authoritative voice howled.

"Or we can go," I gasped as we took off. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Patrick start running. He was heading for an alley way in their line of sight. They'd see him and chase him. There was no way to know what would happen to him if they caught him.

In his absence, Brent took over. "Stick together," he panted. "If we split up there'll be no way to know if we all made it. Can't... take the risk of leaving one of us behind. Wait, stop here, hide."

"They're cops," I whimpered as we all dropped in the darkness beneath an empty window. Empty window into an unfinished room. It gave me the creeps. What gave me worse creeps was the idea that Brent and Patrick thought there was something more going on. Something more than simple law-enforcing cops.

"Bad feelings," Brent muttered.

"Screw your bad feelings," Keith snarled. "You're all crazy. I'm going to my car."

He started to stand up, and Brent grabbed his arm and yanked him into the dirt, pinning him there. Keith's eyes went wide, and he shouted a muffled profanity through Brent's fingers.

"You idiot!" I hissed. "Run!"

We struggled to our feet, and Keith directed a rather graphic threat to Brent. Brent chose to ignore it.

There was something about this that I loved... something about running that I loved. Something about the drama of something greater. Something better than suburban monotony.

"Freeze!"

"Go, go go go!" Brent ordered.

"He's not talking to us! It's Patrick!" I cried.

"You're under arrest," a clipped voice said. I heard a thud as a body hit the dirt.

"There are more of them, sir!"

"Well, _get them_!"

"Not a chance," Brent said grimly, and he pointed ahead. "There's my car. We're out of here."

Another twenty frantic steps, and I hit the car, my arms pressing against it in an effort to stay upright. No. My arm, singular. The other was gripping something at my side.

I looked down.

"Take me to my car," I said woodenly. "We have to meet.. somewhere. I'll follow you guys."


	11. T: Why?

I dropped into the booth and stared across the table at Brent. "How the heck did they know anyone was there," I demanded. It wasn't a question. I didn't expect him to have an answer.

However, Brent rarely doesn't have an answer. "Video cameras?" he pondered aloud. "If the police force really is working to cover it up, you'd expect them to have those installed."

"They wouldn't show up just for a pack of kids."

Brent drummed his fingers on the cheap plastic table. "The question," he said sharply, nearly cutting off my last word, "is what made the kid scream. That's why they came, whatever it was."

"How did they get here so fast?"

"They're watching that place, Taylor!" he half-snarled. "I told you! This isn't some stupid conspiracy theory! Well, maybe it is, but it's true!" He was talking too fast to notice how idiotic he sounded, I concluded. "Something crashed, something crashed and someone doesn't want it to come out. Keith, put the damn beer down!"

Before I could comment on his choice of words, Keith waved the bottle a little drunkenly. "They're gonna take a fake ID," he slurred, "I'm gonna take a drink."

Brent swore a few times in his general direction. "They got Patrick. Those weren't normal cops, guys. I'm telling you. No cop goes after kids."

"You said it yourself," I pointed out. "They weren't after us. They were after... whatever was there."

"Witnesses," he said. It took me a moment to get what he was saying. When I did, I threw back my head and laughed. Keith laughed along, an empty, too-happy giggle of revelry. It grated my nerves. My nerves had been stretched too tight.

"Why the hell are we in a bar, anyway?" demanded Brent. "We can go anywhere, and you pick this place? Patrick got arrested and all you care about is drinking?"

"I don't know, man. Something's not right," he babbled. "Not normal. It's not normal. We're --"

I slammed the table. "We're going home," I interrupted. "Patrick will probably spend a night in jail and get bailed or whatever and be home by tomorrow. We'll talk tomorrow and he'll prove that you're all just psychos!" I stopped dead, and my tone dropped as I looked at Brent. "I've never seen him look like that."

"I know," he whispered. "It's like he found... whatever he was looking for. You don't find that running from cops. Even Patrick wouldn't find it running from cops."

We were crazy, that was it; the night had driven us crazy. I couldn't keep my brain still. It was galloping off on tangents, distracted, was it distracted or was I distracted? Were we distracted? Who is we? Is there someone else in my head?

Prom queen, coward, and some twisted part of me that wanted to stay with Patrick, knew I would be complete if I'd stayed with Patrick, not for Patrick, but for what he was up against.

_I make no sense,_ I realized. _Not even to me. It's just a flood of emotion and everything's coming out..._

"Come on," Brent said, with an attempt at calmness. "We're rattled, Keith isn't even sober, we'll go home and it'll be okay. Taylor's right, it will all be okay tomorrow." The set of his jaw confirmed what I was thinking: he knew it was BS. He knew it was BS as well as I did.

"Why are we so panicked?" I reasoned, anyway. "They're law-abiding cops. Law-enforcing cops. Whatever. Nothing to worry about. They'll find out we didn't do anything, and it'll be fine."

"We're going home," said Brent, and then, when he looked at Keith, "and I'm driving."

"Gotta pay," Keith muttered, dragging a crumpled twenty out of his pocket. He left it on the table when we stumbled out.

I looked over my shoulder. "There's going to be change, Keith. That was one bottle."

"Don't want it. Don't need it. We're going to die anyway." He looked at me, and his eyes were glazed and hopeless.

The door swung shut behind us, and I threw my hands in the air. "What, are you all crazy? We're just scared little seniors! This isn't some movie! It doesn't all have to be a plot to kill everyone! It's just a mistake. The cops just made a mistake."

Brent shrugged at me. "Just go home, Taylor. I'll see you at school."

I let out a frustrated yell and stalked to my car. "I've had it with both of you!" I threw over my shoulder. "It'll be fine! Stop being such idiots!"

The drive home was a blur. The thoughts trapped in my head kept spilling out, and twice I caught myself babbling out loud. I was shaking, I was shak_en_, I was out of control, and I don't know how I made it home alive. Got the finger once, got honked at twice, and not in a "hey, baby" way. By the time I pulled in my drive, I was ready to either throw up or cry, shivering and panting and hysterical and not even knowing why. I grabbed the box, the box, was it worh all this?

I opened my door. The cat was waiting for me, purring. Her feline eyes drifted to the cube, and she let out a soft _miaow._

"Yeah, Hawk. Isn't it pretty," I said flatly. I stalked past her, headed upstairs.

I passed my father's study, smelling the familiar aroma of cigarettes. I stuck my head in on my way to the room, to sleep, to an escape. I took in the appearance of the room. Books lined every one of the five shelves. The elegant mahogany desk was accented by an equally elegant chair, supporting a slender man with streaked silver-black hair, high cheekbones, and dark-circled eyes that commanded respect. In one hand the man held a liquor glass. An ashtray on the desk held a cigarette.

"I'm home, Dad," I said, for no reason. My parents don't monitor when I come in, or if I come in at all.

He nodded at me. "Good," he said, also for no reason. "You're early. It's not even eight yet."

Had it all gone that quickly? "Yeah. I'm going to get some sleep. Night." I sighed, wrapping my arms around myself. "Don't hit the cigarettes too hard tonight, okay?" I said, and added, with a halfhearted attempt at a joke, "Someday you'll burn the house down."

He chuckled. "I'm always careful. You know that." A shadow of a smile crossed his face. "Night, Taylor."


	12. R: Fire in Our Eyes

I watched Taylor disappear up the stairs. A moment later, I heard voices, Taylor's and a man's. Her father, I reasoned, a little rattled by the fact that with all my panicked frenzy to get back inside undetected I hadn't even noticed his scent in the house.

Taylor had been carrying the cube when she walked in. That helped me to relax a little. I was still shaken up from hearing the sirens in my cat half-morph and having to quickly reverse and come up with an alternate plan. Owl, that had been a good plan, sure. In that town. If any of my friends... if any of the Controller Animorphs had seen me, it would have been all over. But hey, less conspicuous than eagle, right? I was still alive, and free, and in those troubled times I couldn't expect anything better.

The guy named Patrick had been arrested. That was depressing. In him, I'd seen a shadow of myself, a shadow of a blond girl in a construction site drawing the Hork-Bajir away from her friends. I remembered that moment. It was the first moment when I'd really lived in my own skin.

His nearly delirious joy fleeing the cops had been obvious to my owl eyes. He'd felt it, as I had: the transcendance from a normal life.

There were no rules. At school, I was a pretty obedient kid. Follow the rules, stay on the teacher's good side, be proper, make the good grades -- be the model student, Rachel, don't ever cross the lines. No one would have believed that of me, but it was true: those were the thoughts swimming in my head at the honor assemblies, the gymnastic meets, everything. Upholding propriety. Upholding my image. And the darkness in my eyes never showed. Don't cross the lines, Rachel.

But in this world, in _my_ world, the lines had been crossed for me. You had to fight, fight, fight up against a far greater enemy that could destroy you but maybe I loved it, maybe I loved it, because, in just that one area of my life, there were no boundaries. There was no propriety to be upheld. There was no doubt about what we had to do. I could do it, throw myself into it entirely. Don't worry about ticking anyone off. Just worry about stopping them. Be the bear, Rachel, be what you _want_ to be -- not just the highest you have the potential to be. Don't let your abilities control you. Just fight, Rachel.

And Patrick had felt that. It had glowed in his wild green eyes, wild green eyes that were doubtless no longer his. He had to be infested already. The Yeerks don't want that fire, sure, but what was more of an insult was the fact that they probably hadn't noticed. He was no threat; he could not morph; his fire was useless. Mine was not.

_Tobias, Tobias, where are you? I need you..._ Unbidden, the cry flowed from my soul.

I heard a hacking cough from the upstairs, and it jarred me out of my thoughts. I glanced at the clock. I'd wasted a half hour lying on the Oriental rug, my blank stare fixed on the blank wall.

The cough rattled in the air again. I trotted upstairs, dimly remembering that Taylor's mother was out of town, visiting some friend. For some reason I felt uneasy being alone in the house with a sleeping girl and -- judging by the smell -- her cigarette-and-alcohol addicted father.

The study was smoke-filled. Bored, I crept inside and sat down silently behind the chair across the desk from the old man. He didn't see me. He was sobbing too hard to see much of anything.

"The company..." he moaned softly, talking to himself. "We were doing so well, and... _now_..." His head slid into his hands, the classic picture of grief. "How can I tell them that this is all over, how can we just move on? They can't live without this, they won't live without any of this..."

He sprang up and threw a paperweight at the stars that smirked through the window. The glass shattered. "We're falling apart anyway!" he cried out, snarling at himself through clenched teeth. "They'll leave, Mark, you know they will. They'll just leave." His face crumpled. His eyes were empty. He was a shell of a man; the soul had taken its leave already.

A knife of pity cut through me. Something about tears trailing down those high, sunken cheeks would have wrenched the heart of a Taxxon. It was so classic -- something out of a book, a movie -- the businessman destroyed by the failure of his company, talking to himself, drinking, smoking, crying...

Desperate, he moved back to the desk, snatching up a cigarette. His trembling fingers fumbled with the lighter, then dropped the lit white cylinder in the ash tray as he groped for the liquor glass.

Fire. Alcohol.

I shot out of there.

I don't know if it was intentional or not. I don't know if the empty-eyed businessman took his life, or if it was just a freak accident. I don't know if he planned to destroy the family he imagined -- or knew -- no longer loved him, or if he died calling their names. I don't know. I couldn't hear. The explosion drowned everything else out.

I felt it singe my fur. I felt it hammer the adrenaline through me. I felt it drive the fear through my head. I ran.

I demorphed as I ran. It didn't matter if Taylor saw me now. There was no way anyone could survive this.

_You could save her,_ my nagging conscience whined. _You have morphs that can survive anything. You could drag one girl to safety._

_Compromise. I won't kill her. Let nature take its course. See what would have happened if I wasn't here. Like the Ellimist, haha, I'm as powerful as the Ellimist, and I just sit back and let things happen..._

I pushed those thoughts out of my head. It was time to focus.

The whole place was going to go up in flames, and I needed that box.


	13. T: Nightmare

I shuddered in the night air as we walked around the construction site. "Hold up," I called, teeth chattering. "I'm cold."

"Let me hold you," Keith offered, and without waiting for a response put both arms around my waist. I leaned against him, but I didn't feel any warmer; his body was like ice. I turned to look at him, confused, and his eyes were cold and glazed and empty.

"Keith..."

Then he was Brent, and his arms were Brent's, and his eyes were Brent's, and Brent's eyes were alive and hungry, looking for something, like Patrick's had been for so long. But Patrick wasn't there, Patrick was lying in a corner. There was a bullet through his brain.

That didn't surprise me. Of course Patrick was dead. Patrick had found the thing that completed him -- didn't he have to be dead? It was against the rules to live complete.

Patrick's eyes were open even in death, and in them the flames blazed, and it called me to him. I pushed away from Brent (and then he was Keith, looking after me like a lost, rebuked puppy -- abandoned). I knelt beside the corpse and tilted Patrick's head so his dead but impassioned eyes stared into mine, and the warmth of them took my cold away, stopped my shivering.

And the fire roared.

My eyes opened wide to stare up at a ceiling that should have been dark with night. It wasn't. It was orange, a dull, glowing orange.

I screamed.

I don't know if my terror was because of the smoke seeping through my door, the raging light shining through the cracks beside and beneath it, or the blond-haired girl ripping through my bureau.

"Oh, crap," she muttered, and the words seemed ridiculously out of place. She spun around and sent me a dark, hate-filled look. "Where is it?!"

I was frozen, immobile, cowed by her and terrified of the crackling I could hear from the hallway and the flickers painting my walls. _Shouldn't I run? Open the windows, Taylor, jump if you have to, a broken leg's better than burning alive._ But I didn't move.

"Where-is-the-box," she snapped, her words as rapid as machine gun fire. "I know it's here. Where is it?!"

"In the closet," I half-whimpered, and then I shoved myself up and threw the covers off, glaring, a formidable opponent with a long sports jersey and gold hair shoved back into a ponytail. "Who are you?"

"I wouldn't worry about that if I were you," she spat. "I'd worry about getting out of here."

"No, my parents -- Mom!" I rushed to the door, as if to open it, and then the long cry exploded from my lips: "Dad!"

_You'll burn the house down..._

"Your father is dead. Your mother isn't here." The girl flung back my closet doors and quickly found the box buried under a pile of clothes. She stared at it for a moment, transfixed, then shook it off and raised her blue eyes to mine. "Get out of here."

I nearly screamed yet again at the sight of her pale face and those horrible, vicious, beautiful eyes -- but I stifled it. Unable to comprehend the death of my father, unable to let it sink in, unable to accept it as true, I retreated to my question once again: "Who are you?"

She snorted. "A dream. Just go."

"No! You did this!"

"I didn't do anything. Now _go_!" Her calm vanished, and her lips twisted into a snarl. "Go now and I won't kill you! Do you understand what it would do for me to kill you? Do you understand that without you I'm lifeless, that I'm nothing, I have no future? Do you understand that you're my only chance at life?! Go! Go!"

I lunged and grabbed the box. She held on to it with one hand and raked her nails across my face with the other. I screamed again, as if thinking someone would come, save me, save me from everything, but no one came.

I felt an electric current rip through me as my hands met the flat surface of the box, and in shock, I almost dropped it. As my grip loosened, she snatched it back and grabbed both my wrists in one hand. My muscles went weak, and I felt my eyes start to roll up in my head. I saw the concentration on her face.

Suddenly my feeling returned, and the weakness and the electricity were gone. Her hand was still on my wrists, and for a moment I focused on her, seeing the contours in her face that mirrored mine, the mouth that was just a shade larger, the premature furrowing of her brow, the body that was as tall and slim as my own. She was beautiful, and she was me. Her eyes -- mirrors of mine -- glazed, and for a moment I had the strange sensation of some part of her flowing into me. Then she snapped back to reality.

A low growl slid from her throat, an animal growl, a terrifying growl, and the monster that was a girl roared. "_GO_!"

Coarse brown fur sprouted on her arms and teeth shot down out of her mouth, pressed over her perfect lips. She jumped back, growing, growing, doubling in size and still growing. I covered my face with my hands and whimpered, cowering back against the wall.

The wall was hot.

"Don't you understand anything?" the beast asked, in a low, guttural moan. "You're going to be incinerated! Get out!"

She dropped to all fours and backed up slightly, a lengthening snout turned towards the window, and then she turned her smile on me.

{If you survive, you stupid girl, you're going to be infested,} she said, and her voice was in my mind. {Well, here's a message for whoever gets you. When you see this memory, Yeerk -- know that I am alive. Know that Avenger lives.} Her laugh was insane.

With that, she bolted for the window, slamming through the glass and the wall, hurtling the two-story drop to the ground.

The wall behind me simply exploded. There was heat and pain and a kind of fierce, wild joy, and I remembered nothing else, except that for one glorious moment with the voice inside my skull, I had been complete.


	14. T: Aftermath

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Dimly, I recognized the sound that hammered in my ear drums. My uncle had been in the hospital. We'd gone to see him. He'd had a heart monitor.

Who was in the hospital now? I must have dozed off in the waiting room. Embarrassed, I opened my eyes, hoping whoever I was visiting hadn't noticed me sleeping when I should have been talking to them.

I was blind in one eye.

But not so blind that I couldn't see the stump of my left arm, and the way the sheets sank where my right leg should have been. Not so blind that I couldn't see that half of my left leg was gone, that I'd lost it from the knee down. Not so blind that I didn't notice my right hand was missing...

"_Oh, God_!"

But the sound didn't come out like that. It came out strange, mangled. I felt my lips form sounds and I could tell that they were not whole. They didn't fit together -- they were twisted and ruined and scabbed over, and they didn't close entirely, didn't form a line. They formed a wavy S with gaps in the middle that showed my broken teeth.

_Isn't that swearing? Why did I swear? Mother doesn't like swearing..._

Insanity, I'd lost my limbs and I'd gained a shaking, insane voice in the back of my mind. Insane. I felt the insanity. I'd seen the insanity before, where had I seen it?

Delusional.

"Oh, my baby..." The voice of an older woman was suddenly sharp and hysterical in my ears. I heard an explosive cry from the right. "My Taylor, my Taylor..."

"The fire did extensive damage," a male voice said, also on my right. It was quiet and subdued. "Obviously."

"My husband... must have been..." The woman was sobbing. "He should have come with me, he should have come to the party... this wouldn't have happened... he was so upset, he stayed and he didn't tell me why and I thought he was there and _Taylor..._ Taylor..."

The grief was heartbreaking. Who was the woman, who was the woman who kept calling for me? Why did she care? Why would anyone care about the mangled monster lying in the too-white bed?

"Mommy?" I whimpered, and the guttural word was nothing close to what I'd wanted to say, but the woman entered my field of vision for a moment, moving to hug me.

The doctor stopped her. "The pain will kill her," he muttered.

"My baby..." A long moan. She sank back, and then I couldn't see her, because my right eye saw nothing.

I screamed. My voice was hellish. The doctor flinched and the woman wailed.

I felt a needle enter what was left of my right arm, and I screamed louder, and then quite suddenly everything was black.

  
  
I moaned softly as I rose from my unconscious state.

My mother was next to me, and she hugged me, gently, and I cried out in pain. She released me slowly, careful not to pull out the IV stuck deep in my right arm. "Oh, Taylor."

"Khar... hark kakk... enn..." The animal sounds, strained with sobs and with only a shadow of my ruined voice, sounded nothing like the desperate "Mom, what happened?" I'd been trying so hard to get out. With a shock, I realized I couldn't pronounce any sound that needed my lips to press together. She still understood.

"I... went to that party, at my friend's..." She swallowed. "Your father went, but he came back home... he... must have been drinking and smoking again... blew up the study, burned down the house. His liquor and his lighters -- he's dead, Taylor."

I nodded as well as I could. I wouldn't have even known he was home if I hadn't checked the study. What had I checked the study? Because of the events at the construction site a town over? Because I needed to see something normal, something real? I would have just assumed he'd stayed at the party otherwise, and I never would have known how the fire happened... What would have been better, knowing or not knowing? Knowing my own father had done this to me or... just... never understanding?

But I'd known he was dead. How had I known that?

_Your father is dead. Your mother isn't here._

I remembered her, then. I remembered the fire and the heat and the pain and the girl with the coarse brown fur and the long blond hair. I remembered seeing myself in the mirror, except that there was no mirror, just a girl with my eyes and my hair and my skin and my smile, except she hadn't smiled, she'd said she wanted to kill me. Why, why, why didn't you kill me...?

That had been the insanity, her insanity, and now it was mine.

I was sobbing, sobbing in rough gasps and sounding for all the world like a dying animal. My mother wrapped her arms around me, and I shrank against her, burying my face in her shoulder, ignoring the pain until my muscles gave out and I fell back onto the bed. Then I whimpered, but it was indiscernable from the sounds I was already making.

"Your friends have been here," she whispered. "Jessie and Keith. They..."

_They won't be back,_ I wanted to say, but I didn't want to face what my voice had become. _I know they won't be back, Mom, you don't have to pretend. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm a little monster._

"K... ren...?"

"Yes. Keith was here," my mother repeated.

But I wasn't asking for Keith. I was asking for Brent. I wanted to see him, and I wanted to ask him if Patrick was okay, if Patrick was back, because Patrick was the only person in the world who would have understood the completeness, the joy I'd felt last night when my world exploded and that voice rang in my head. No joy now. No illusions. No completeness. But I wanted to tell him...

But it wasn't last night, was it? How long had I been unconscious? How could I ask?

How could I have told Patrick anyway?

_What joy? What completeness? You don't even have your limbs, Taylor, not anymore. You'll never be complete. You're not beautiful anymore._

"You'll be okay," Mom said (_No, not Mom, Mommy, can I call you Mommy? Can I call you Mommy again...?_), and she gently touched my head. I felt her touch on my scalp -- no hair in the way except a few rough, singed strands. (_This isn't happening to me._) "You'll be okay." (_No, I won't, I won't ever be okay again, Mommy... Mommy, hold me?_) "I promise. They'll make it better." (_Stop saying "okay," I'll never be okay._) "Taylor, can you hear me?" (_Don't cry, Mommy... Am I insane? Of course I'm insane... fire makes people insane, Patrick's fire made him insane and _her_ fire made her insane, too, but is that different? No, it wasn't, their fire was in their eyes and my fire was in my eye too..._)

I was sinking into my sleep, my numbing, glorious sleep again, but I heard her last words anyway. "The Sharing is coming, they'll help you. You'll be okay again."

I clutched at those words for one moment, and then I fell asleep.


	15. R: Visitations

"I don't know if we should, Brent..."

"What are you afraid of?" The voice I immediately recognized was edgy and a tad freaked out. "So she'll look different. She's still Taylor."

"But..." the girl he was talking to faltered.

"Jessie..."

There was a loud sigh. Actually, it was a very soft sigh, and it was further softened by the fact that it was at the other end of the hallway. But an eagle waiting outside a cracked window misses nothing.

I'd finally figured out that fly morph was not going to be a winner. Perching outside Taylor's hospital room in a tree was much more attractive. Plus, I could hear and see better. I really had no idea why I was there -- perhaps because I felt guilty, perhaps because I wanted the joy of seeing her humiliated. Probably the latter.

Or maybe it was neither of those. Maybe it was just a rabid curiosity that kept drawing me back to this reflection of myself. I wanted to see who I would have been if there had been no war. Looking at Taylor was like staring at a time machine -- a machine that made me two years older, but two years ago.

I could hear footsteps. I tried to remember where I'd heard the name Jessie, and it clicked -- one of Taylor's locker-friends, as I thought of them. Jessie hadn't impressed me much. Neither had Brent. He'd lost it in the face of danger, he'd run away, and I don't have patience with people who do that. I don't have the privilege of doing that. Maybe I resent the people that do.

Brent cleared his throat. "Knock, knock," he called softly, stepping into the room. Jessie was just behind him, probably wanting to see his reaction before she herself progressed further.

She got a reaction. Brent stopped dead and she, very smoothly, careened into his back. As Brent stared in shock, a muffled "Ow" was audible behind him.

"Erc... hao..." the monster that had been Taylor tried to greet him.

I abruptly decided that there was no joy of humiliation in this. For a moment I wanted to cry.

"Taylor," Brent muttered. Slowly, forcing himself, he stepped forward and sank into the chair by her bed. His eyes were wide and horrified, but to his credit he kept his tone calm and even. "Hello."

Unfortunately, moving like that exposed Jessie -- and the look on Jessie's face. It was twisted, eyes bulging, mouth open, lips wrenched downward in a hideous look of horror that distorted her face and exposed the gums of her lower jaw.

I expected a moan or a cry from the beast in the bed. There was none; Taylor, ruined Taylor, had her pride.

"How are you doing...?" asked Brent, his hands clenching and unclenching in his lap. Immediately he looked remorseful -- Taylor couldn't talk, wasn't about to try again.

"T--Taylor," Jessie stammered. "You... are you going to be... okay?"

"Eh... eh... ooh..." she attempted, and it was pitiful to see a creature almost without lips try to form the simple word "No." I looked away, and then, like a paper clip to a magnet, looked back at the horrible scene.

Then, only then, did my full guilt hit me: I could have grabbed her and aided her in escape; I could have wrenched her along with me; I could have saved her. But I didn't. And there she lay.

Taylor's good eye flitted from person to person. Brent understood. "Yeah. We're... together."

There were about five minutes of tortured silence before Jessie sprang up. "I need to get back," she blurted, the personification of tact. "I hope you get better, Taylor."

I saw the request in Taylor's one eye -- don't tell them, don't tell them what I am. But I knew there was next to no chance Jessie saw it and even less that she'd obey it if she had. This was good gossip. The beauty queen was Frankenstein's creation. And I was Dr. Frankenstein.

"Yeah," Brent acquiesced, slowly standing up. "I... Taylor..."

Taylor looked panicked, and her good eye blinked rapidly. Her lips twisted. "Hacric!" she cried. "Hacric!"

For a moment he looked blank, then he snapped his fingers. "Patrick. Right. Patrick's... Patrick's back. He seems fine. Nothing wrong. They let him out once they talked to his parents and got it cleared up that he didn't do anything wrong. One night in jail. Just like I told you."

Then he winced, as if remembering her last night as a human was painful.

I looked away again. _Patrick... I'm sorry. Maybe I could have saved you too._

I was lost in thought for a moment, and when I glanced back in, Brent and Jessie had left, and harsh animal sounds were coming from the girl I had destroyed. Sobs, or something like them.

Footsteps? More footsteps? Were they coming back? No, I knew human youth too well -- they would never come back. I ruffled my feathers and adjusted my position, staring inside but trying not to be noticed.

Nothing could have really prepared me for the person who walked in that room.

A boy Taylor's age strode in with quick, purposeful steps. He stood a few feet back from the bed, just within the doorway. He showed no surprise at her appearance. I got the feeling that, without disgust, he could have easily shook her hand, if she'd had a hand left.

But that made sense. He wasn't human.

He inclined his head respectfully in place of a handshake. "Taylor Gregor," he greeted her. "I hope it doesn't seem forward, but I and the organization I represent would like to help you."

She was watching him with interested eyes -- with one interested eye. I felt sick.

"First, I'll introduce myself." The young man smiled. "My name is Tom Berenson."


	16. T: Decision

[**A/N: Because of problems with FF.NET, I had to delete and reupload this entire story. I saved most of my reviews, but looking at the glaring Reviews: 0 thing hurts. =\ Anyway, review extra to make up for this sad loss? :P Enjoy!**]

"First, I'll introduce myself. My name is Tom Berenson."

The name meant nothing to me. Why was a stranger visiting me, if my own friends couldn't manage to look at my face? The mortification of having Jessie, of having Brent look at my perfect skin and grimace in disgust, still raged within me. And what about Patrick? I had so much I needed to ask him -- so much I _couldn't_ ask him, not with these nightmarish lips and broken voice.

And Keith. Where was Keith?

Tom watched me. "The doctors have told us you spent four days in critical condition. Now your condition is a little more stable."

Momentarily, I wondered why the doctors would tell a stranger anything.

"Your father's death has obviously been very painful for you," he said quietly, soberly, comfortingly. "The Sharing is here to offer you help."

_My father's death? Look at me! Look at me, you idiot! _This_ is painful for me! I lost my kingdom, I've lost everything..._ My thoughts were rudely jarred when I realized what they were. _My father's dead and I'm worried about my appearance...? No, Taylor -- about the fact that you're a monster! A lame, crippled monster --_

"Taylor, can you hear me?"

My good eye cleared. I grunted unintelligibly, and was ashamed.

"We have... a procedure we could perform. A procedure to heal you."

I froze. He had my full attention. I locked my eye on him.

"We have information we need from you, Taylor." He slid his chair closer. "Something of ours was lost. We think you might know where it is. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

His expression was so friendly. I didn't know why it scared me. I shook my head slightly and felt the rush of pain. Then I paused, and grunted again, with more energy this time. "Ahok."

Tom paused, concentrating. "Yes. A box." Had I made that much sense or was it just what he wanted to hear? Relief seemed to wash over him. "Do you know where it is?"

"T...hook it," I managed. "See t-hook it."

"She?" His face clouded. "Who is she?"

I looked at him pleadingly. He understood. "Ah, yes," he said, sympathetically. "Talking is hard for you. Well, Taylor, the procedure..." He paused. "You would have to... aid us. Be willing to serve us. But in exchange we could give you back your body."

_With what? Prosthetics?_ I wondered.

"With something better than artificial limbs," he continued, as if reading my mind -- or was it etched on my face? "We could... restore your DNA, if we had that box. We could make you whole again, completely whole, like there was never a fire. It's very advanced, secret government technology. But we need you, too, Taylor. Like you need us. We need your body, once it is whole."

I was still. Contemplating.

"We... we need bodies, Taylor," he said, very quietly. "We are helpless without them. One of us will... enter you. But you will still be Taylor, Taylor, whole. Perfect, again. Your mind, our mind, one."

It appealed to me...

"I'll come back tomorrow, Taylor," he added, rising. "I really want to help you. You and your whole family. The procedure is completely painless, and money is not a problem. If you comply with our demands, it will be performed free of charge."

I raised my stump of a right hand, testing him. He didn't even hesitate, just shook it, gently, carefully.

"Gud," I tried to say.

Tom shook his head quickly. "You don't have to talk. I know it's painful. But it doesn't have to be that way, Taylor."

When he was gone, I closed my eye and let my head sink slowly back to the pillows.

_You would have to... aid us. Be willing to serve us._ _I don't want to serve anyone,_ I thought. _The human race betrayed me. I never want to aid it. Or any member of it. But he's not talking about the human race, is he? What is he talking about?_

_We need you, too, Taylor. Like you need us._

_I don't want to need anyone. But I do. I can't do anything on my own, anymore. I can't live in this hospital bed._

_But you will still be Taylor, Taylor, whole. Perfect, again._

_Oh, yeah? Perfect? Me?_ I leaned what was left of my cheek against the cool white pillow.

_They'll get her,_ I realized, suddenly. _They'll find her and get that box and they'll do to her what's been done to me. They'll help me get revenge. They'll -- what did she do to you, Taylor? Just steal the box? No, she left me, she left me there for this to happen to me._

_They'll get her and I hope they kill her -- slowly -- I hope they burn her alive. I hope they scar her perfect face. Perfect, like me. Like I'll be..._

The beginnings of insanity slithered their ways into my mind like snakes through mud. I whimpered softly, and then I was asleep.


	17. T: Making it Official

**[A/N: At the end of #17, everyone but Rachel, Marco, and Cassie had been captured. However, the Yeerks released them all due to the oatmeal thing. This never made sense to me. They could have infested at least one of the Animorphs then and there and no one could have stopped them. So I decided to write a fic where they _had_ done that, and this is what emerged, due to my fascination with Rachel and Taylor... Obviously, since this is before #33, they've never met Taylor (or David, for that matter, as he shows up in one of the chapters). Anyway, read on, and enjoy!]**

  
I woke up and it all rushed back. I understood living death; I understood everything, or so it seemed for one long moment. Then I remembered Tom and I understood nothing, because I remembered that, broken as I was, I still faced a choice. _It is easy for people without choices to understand,_ I thought.

I felt my muscles, stiff from days of lying unused. I still didn't know how long I'd been unconscious - did I? Had someone told me? How long had I been asleep?

"Ehxx.." I tried to cry out to see if anyone was there, but the sound gurgled with the pain of thorns in my tender throat. No one answered. No one was there. Were they supposed to leave people like me alone?

Despite the agony, I tried to raise myself up with my bloody stump to see the door. Empty hallway. I was alone. I twisted my neck to lay what was left of my cheek against the pillow.

In doing so, my left eye could see what my right eye _should_ have seen - the hand of a nurse lying against the tile floor. I jerked and cried out as my wasted muscles wrenched in protest. I felt one of the few whole bones I had left snap. I fell back against the sheets helplessly, but not before I saw her.

"Good morning," she greeted me, leaning over the bed. "You're Taylor. And so am I."

And she was - in every sharp feature of her face, in the mocking curve of her smile. She wore a simple leotard that accentuated her - my - perfect figure. I recognized my chin tapped on her face; I saw my high brows at the limits of her forehead. I would have screamed but suddenly I realized there was no point and I only whimpered.

"I pity you, Taylor," she told me softly. "Honestly, I do. But I tried to warn you. I told you to get out. I did, you remember." Her brows wrinkled over her glittering eyes. "Am I trying to convince myself? I guess it doesn't matter..." She shook her head. "You don't know what the Sharing would do to you. It wouldn't be worth it. And everyone knows you'll die in just a few days, Taylor. But none of those are the reason I'm going to kill you. No, it's much simpler - survival. You can't survive because I have to."

She walked around to the other side of my bed, presumably so I could see her better. On the way, she gently closed the door. Her movements were so graceful; were they hers or mine? The lines between us unraveled like broken threads. She placed one hand on my stump. I saw no revulsion on her face.

"Yes, I've seen worse. I've been worse. I've had stumps too, before... grizzly stumps." She laughed. "I guess it doesn't matter what you know now, because you're going to die..."

Her face crumpled. "I don't want to kill you. I don't want to kill anything else, Taylor. But I want so deeply, so desperately, to live... I do..."

Suddenly her long fingers reached under my bed and drew out a small pod, not longer than my forearm. "This is what would have been in your ear in another fifteen minutes," crooned my voice from someone's else's lips. It was so unfair - she had my body and I had nothing, nothing at all! "And then it wouldn't have been you watching someone else control your body in third person, it would have been you watching someone else control your body in first person. Control the original.

"You don't understand, and you never will, but it's okay. I swear what I'm doing is kinder than what they'd do. It is kinder, isn't it?" she babbled as she drew the Yeerk out of the pod. She threw it to the ground quickly, full of disgust. She hit it with the metal pod in a quiet, controlled way, devoid of hate or pleasure. "I don't like killing things anymore, Taylor," she went on. "I don't want to kill anything."

Then she turned back to me. I realized that I still did not know her name. I had nothing to call her but "she." The inhuman cruelty of being killed by someone whose name I did not even know made the death seem more horrible, made the adrenaline rise in my veins. I struggled but ceased with the first stab of pain through my body.

Cool, distant eyes stared into ragged, half-closed ones; both pairs of eyes were mine. I saw the gun as she picked it up from the table by my head. I saw her push a lever up. I knew that she was going to shoot me with it, with this horrible gun that didn't even look real.

"We are each other, Taylor. I'm just making it official."

_Tsseew!_

The girl dodged hard and fell onto my body. Two more bones snapped. I screamed as she rolled over me and sprang for the window, throwing all of her weight against it. The glass caved beneath a body that was already being covered by coarse brown hair.

"Rachel!" Tom Berenson howled from the doorway, hair falling over his face, hands grasping a gun like hers. He rushed to the window and I heard a solid thump. A slow grin spread across his face.

"She's out," he reported to two nurses in the hall. "Get her. Quickly. Or I'll make sure you're all killed."

**A/N: Well, here's the long-awaited chapter 17. I love this chapter, mainly because of the parallel between her intents with Taylor and David's actions with Saddler in book #21. Please review! I haven't written in almost nine months, and I need feedback. With that said, thanks for reading. =)**


	18. T: Infestation

**[A/N: At the end of #17, everyone but Rachel, Marco, and Cassie had been captured. However, the Yeerks released them all due to the oatmeal thing. This never made sense to me. They could have infested at least one of the Animorphs then and there and no one could have stopped them. So I decided to write a fic where they _had_ done that, and this is what emerged, due to my fascination with Rachel and Taylor... Obviously, since this is before #33, they've never met Taylor (or David, for that matter, as he shows up in one of the chapters). Anyway, read on, and enjoy!]**

  
Tom swung the gun back around and pointed it at me for a moment; as I blinked my left eye in shock, he remembered that I was no threat. He lowered it with a snarl and ran one hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes. He sank into one of the hospital chairs like a visitor, his gun drooping at his side, nearly dragging on the floor.

I croaked out something unintelligible. Tom shrugged. "Just wait a little while, Taylor," he commanded. "You'll be talking again soon enough, if all goes as planned. As long as she has that box."

She'd had the box, I remembered dimly. A grizzly plunging through my window and half my wall, with the box clenched in its teeth. I tried to nod, just a little shuddering of my head, up and down, slowly. Painfully.

Tom eyed me for a moment and then his eyes lit up. "She did!" he crowed in understanding. "She did, didn't she? Well, then, it works out for all of us."

Rejuvenated, Tom jumped up. He crossed over to my bed and knelt, running his hand over the tile, searching for something. Evidently he didn't find it. He scowled as he stood up.

"That bitch," he muttered. "She - ugh!" He bent over, looking at the remains of the slug he'd just stepped in. "There goes Ickthar 417," he growled at nothing. He certainly wasn't growling at me. I wasn't important enough to growl at.

I understood that their project to "heal" me was not about me at all. I knew that they were evil; that much was obvious, from the girl's ranting and Tom's threat to kill the nurses. I knew that they needed me for something and that otherwise I would probably have been disregarded. But I did not care in the least.

Tom stepped over to the door and made a sharp left, heading down the hall to the place I assumed the nurse's station had to be. I would have scoffed if I'd been able to. Leaving me unattended was an insult. He knew I could not escape even if I did not want them to do... whatever it was they were going to do. So why had he played nice earlier?

Ah, yes - for fear that the girl and I were allied. That was the only thing that made sense.

I lay in silent contemplation for a few moments, not that I had much choice. After no more than two minutes, Tom reappeared with a canister in his hand, probably containing a slug like the one the girl had killed. His smile was cruel; it reminded me of her.

"Here we go, Taylor," he told me cheerfully. "If you don't like it, grin and bear it. You'll get used to it soon enough. And then you'll be beautiful again."

He opened the canister and held it to my ear. A moment later, I felt something wet and soft touch my earlobe. In spite of my resolve, I trembled, but even a movement like that was so agonizing that I froze and held still. The slug kept feeling its way in. I felt it squeeze through the tiny hole and past my eardrum, heard its horrible squishing body flatten and curve to navigate the pathway. And then I felt its cold, moist skin in my brain.

Abruptly I lost control of my limbs. My stump swung forward, and the pain I had been feeling was strangely absent; I was aware that it existed but I did not feel it.

{Aaaah!} a voice cried sharply. It spoke without words; I understood that it came from the creature inside my skull. {Pain! They gave me a defective host! This wasn't what I was promised!}

{They say I'll get better,} I answered immediately, and communicating the way the slug did was a relief; I did not have to form sounds with my ruined mouth anymore. {They say they're going to make sure I'm healed.}

{Don't try to trick me!} the slug snapped in fury. {Humans like this can't be healed! What's going on here? I want a -}

"I'm sure I know what you're thinking, Xanos 208," commented Tom as he observed my body twitch and squirm. I realized he could not hear us. "You were promised a normal human host. I know, I know. But Ickthar was killed by the Animorph. She's been here. Your current host is going to be our latest project; she's had contact with Rachel Berenson, who, coincidentally, is about to be infested herself."

"Khalt..." The slug's words died in my throat. It had control of my speech, my limbs; I felt the first edge of dread creep over me.

"We'll fix her, I promise," soothed the boy who was not a boy.

{Is he a slug, too?}

{We're _Yeerks_, not garden snails.} The creature named Xanos sighed noisily. {I know garden snails aren't slugs!} he spat as soon as the thought formed in my mind. {Just be quiet. Be quiet. Don't think; it's too annoying for me to have to listen to it. I don't want to talk to you. I don't even want to be in this twisted body. You're disgusting, human.}

I fell silent and felt him rifling through my memories. How I felt that I can't explain; I could see bits and images of what he was looking at in my mind, but it was less the visual and more the feeling of invasion that tipped me off. My uneasiness grew.

{Oh... the human has the box? _You_ had the box? Hmm... Maybe I'll change my mind about you, Taylor Gregor.} The Yeerk sensed my anxiety and laughed. {No, life as a host is not a picnic. But maybe you will be pretty again, if she has the box... Such a stupid girl, you know. You, not her. Trading your life away for a pretty picture in the yearbook. Not that you'd have a choice about being a host to begin with, but honestly, your eagerness to trade anything for your old face is disturbing.}

I suddenly felt embarrassed - not ashamed of my desire, only ashamed that someone else saw it for what it was.

{What's going on?} I asked. {I don't understand...}

{Foolish human.} Another sigh. {I'll explain, mainly because I really have nothing else to do. Where to start. We're invading Earth. We need more bodies like yours - well, not specifically like yours, preferably ones with all limbs intact - because otherwise we _are_ just garden snails, without the shells.

{We used to be resisted on Earth by six youths who eventually met their match,} he added arrogantly. {All except two, one of which is the girl you saw, have been captured. They can morph; anyone who touches that box can morph. If one morphs, one's injuries go away... it has to do with DNA and other complex things your little mind wouldn't really grasp, so I'll break it down for you: if you touch that box, if you morph, you'll be you again.}

{I touched that box.}

{What?!} With a yelp, he reexamined my memories. {You did! You did! You stupid, foolish, short-sighted child, do you realize what you've thrown away? You could have escaped at any time! You acquired her and she acquired you, and you didn't even know it!}

{I don't understand,} I said helplessly.

{I do.}

I felt my body changing. The Yeerk looked down as long, thin fingers traced their way out of my stump. I could see my leg growing whole again beneath the hospital sheets. Hair flowed in rivers from my scalp. My lips pressed, whole, against each other.

My right eye opened. I could have cried in ecstasy.

Tom spun around as my voice rose in delirious laughter. "Xanos...!"

"She touched it!" he cackled through my lips, the words gloriously clear. "I thought we'd never have another morph-capable, sub-visser... and now it's mine..." The Yeerk threw the sheets away from my body, revealing my legs, my arms, my skin sweeping down to the neck of my still-in-place hospital gown - all of it, whole. "She touched the box and acquired the Animorph! Without even knowing what she was doing, what power she had!"

My face began to change again; I felt minute changes occur all over my body. Tom looked at me and smiled, smiled and pointed to the corner of the room, which housed a standard hospital sink. The Yeerk stumbled as he stood up, quickly mastering human limbs, and headed for the mirror perched above the sink.

I felt his intoxication, anticipation, of what his human form would look like. He had never seen me; he did not know what to expect. I did. My heartbeat quickened, and then we were there...

Long seconds passed as he examined my reflection.

{There, girl, you're pretty again,} murmured Xanos, as if in awe. {And I... I'm invincible.}


	19. R: Stunned

Falling. Pain. Haze. Beeping. Beeping? I woke up fully and opened my eyes to see Tom smirking at me from across the too-white hospital room. "Got you, cuz."

Instinctively I tried to snatch my hands up to cover my ears. The bands that circled my body and bound me to the bed held them back. I growled in frustration and dug my nails into the mattress.

"You're captured, just like your fellow Animorphs." He paused. "I sound so juvenile. But you know what, Rachel? I'm going to enjoy it anyway. You're captured, like Cassie, whose Yeerk is in charge of executing those traitors in the peace movement; like Marco, who had his father infested; like Jake, who brought his parents down to the pool himself; like Aximili- Esgarrouth-Isthil, who is at work adapting the Andalite technology in his brain to serve our purposes. And now we have you. We have won."

"You don't have all of us yet."

Tom shrugged dismissively. "We'll bring you in eagle morph to find Tobias. He'll be thrilled to see you -- he's been searching for you since you disappeared and the Animorphs tried to capture him. You'll say you've found a safe place and lead him straight to one of our facilities."

"He knows where your facilities are. He was the one who watched you, all the time."

"Didn't have much else to do, did he?" He snickered. "But at any rate, we'll devise a new one. There really is no limit to what we can do now. There are no Andalite bandits around to shut us down."

Tom grinned. "You killed off Ickthar and changed Xanos' schedule, but don't worry, Ms. Berenson -- I'm sure we can scrounge up someone who'll be willing to take you. The nurse is getting one out of the portable pool now, someone who can deal with you, someone who can rapidly ascend the ranks. Just think -- you'll probably be the host to a new visser within a week!"

"As excited as I am..." A cockroach's exoskeleton spread over my body. I began to shrink.

"Not so fast!" Tom fired his Dracon beam at me faster than thought. I waited for the vaporization but realized he was smarter than that; I was stunned, midmorph.

He jumped out of his chair and crossed to the side of my bed, flinging my hair into my face and staring at my ear. I heard a relieved chuckle. "Didn't morph far enough, Rachel. We can infest that. And the stun effect won't wear off for one minute, at which point if that idiot nurse hasn't returned I'll zap you again. It's hopeless; I'll save you the emotional strain of debating it with yourself."

"Sub-visser!"

"Right on time," Tom barked as he turned to the door. "Get over here. What designation?"

"Sub-visser thirty-four," whimpered a woman I could not see. I tried to turn my head to look at her, but I was incapable.

"Give the sub-visser to me," said the Yeerk in my cousin's body. I heard a snap as the metal pod opened and another snap as it closed. Now they were in my range of sight. A droplet of sludge fell off the Yeerk and splattered on the hospital floor. I was determined not to scream but then I realized I couldn't anyway.

Tom placed his left hand on my head, holding me still, just in case the beam wore off. His right hand pressed against the lobe of my ear, sloping gently so the slug could climb up and in.

_No no no no!_

_Tseew._

I felt heat singe my ear. Tom screamed and jerked his hand back, a hand with a long black scar stretched across the empty palm.

I heard a soft click as someone thumbed the Dracon beam power switch. _Tseew._

Tom dropped. The woman dropped. The stun effect began to wear off, and I craned my head to see my rescuer, the young man with dirty blond hair and stormy eyes shaking in the doorway.

"Tobias!"

"Rachel," he groaned, dropping to his knees beside the bed. "I thought I was too late..."

I was fully able to move; I started shrinking again, slithering out of the bands; with my half-human hands I shoved them away and began demorphing.

When I was human again, I threw my arms around his neck and cried.


	20. T: Debriefing

[**A/N: The Yeerk Taylor would have had in books #33 and #43 died when Rachel crushed it. The Yeerk she has now is not the one in the series. It doesn't actually matter and is in no way vital to the plot -- it's just that I never got a feel for that Yeerk and I wasn't sure of the designation. With that said...**]

{Here we go,} the Yeerk told me exuberantly. {Your first morph. Second, actually, if you count Rachel Berenson. But I'm not. First other-species morph.}

{You're excited,} I observed. {I didn't really think you Yeerks were the emotional type.} He snorted. {I've been in your head all of three hours,} he pointed out. {Don't form assumptions like that so quickly. And we're not. But most of us don't get to morph, either. It's a special occasion.}

{Good to know. Now that I've been educated, let's go.}

{Awfully eager yourself, aren't you? I guess it hasn't sunk in yet that you're a slave. You still think something about this is glamorous and exciting. You're even stupider than I thought. The only one it's glamorous and exciting for is me. We're going to morph a bird, Taylor, and guess what? You won't even be able to feel your body fly.}

{I'll get to see the view.}

He chuckled. {That's true.} I noticed the derisiveness in his tone.

{You don't like me at all, do you?}

{Why would I, little girl?}

{If you're going to be in my head for the rest of our lives, you should get used to me now.}

{You have _so_ much to learn,} the Yeerk laughed.

Icy uneasiness trickled through my veins. A cold sensation of dread overtook me. I enjoyed it, and I wasn't sure why -- unless it was that this was my completion, like Patrick's was the frantic run from the cops, like Rachel's was obviously the war.

{You and Rachel are not so different,} he told me, reading my mind.

{I don't leave people to die in burning houses,} I snapped.

{And she didn't trade her freedom for a pretty face.} He considered. {You're right. You're nothing alike. You will never be what she is. She -- now _she_ could be one of us. She's strong. She understands what has to be done. Not like Cassie.}

{Cassie?}

{Cassie, Jake, Rachel, Marco, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, Tobias. Former members of Animorphs. Tobias is the only one we haven't captured yet -- after all, as I infested you, my poolmate infested Rachel.}

{How long did they fight?}

{Long enough to damage us, but all that's over. We're free now, and the humans are too stupid to know we're here, unchecked, among them. You don't care, do you? You don't care if we take over Earth, because you think humans are traitorous anyway. You think that because your friends didn't think you were exactly a supermodel while you lay mangled in a hospital bed. You're so shallow.}

{They were supposed to love me,} I said coolly.

{You mean Brent was supposed to love you.}

{Everyone is!} I screamed, suddenly frantic. {I am beautiful! Isn't that all that matters? I am Taylor, everyone has to! How dare they look at anyone else!}

He laughed cruelly in my head. {I'm seeing thoughts no one else ever has, and it's very satisfying. Maybe this pretty exterior isn't the real you. Maybe the real you was that bleeding, oozing creature in the bed.}

I shut up, and tried to keep from thinking any thoughts at all.

{Now. Cassie should be here any moment. Visser Three wants me to acquire as many Earth morphs as possible, and the human zoo is the perfect place to start. So many animals that will be inside me. I'll be an army of one, haha.}

"Taylor," a voice called. I turned around to see a short, African-American girl coming towards me. "Welcome to the Gardens."

"Cassie!" the Yeerk answered. "Right on time. Nice to see you. Come on, show me around."


	21. T: Visser

"This is where we keep the big cats." Cassie pointed at a large door off to the left. "They're not all in the same habitat, of course, but if you go through that door you'll see a series of other doors. it's a very foolish human system to give them this much room. I don't see why they can't just keep them in cages."  
  
{Hawk!} I cried suddenly.  
  
The Yeerk glanced up at the sky as if expecting one to swoop down on him. Us. {What?}  
  
{Hawk. My cat. The cat I --}  
  
Xanos sighed. {Don't you understand anything? That cat had to have been Rachel, watching you, trying to get the box back.}  
  
I paused. {That's not possible. I found her before they got the box.}  
  
{Then she probably wanted to kill you and steal your life. Rachel had nowhere to go, and it's exactly the type of thing she'd do. Your memories indicate that she also trailed you as a fly, coincidentally.}  
  
Suddenly the nightmare backpack incident, where I'd ended up screaming in an old man's driveway, made sense. I seethed.  
  
"Xanos 208, would you try to pay attention to me?" Cassie sighed with contempt. "I understand that taking new hosts can be a bit annoying, at least until you break them, but if you don't start ignoring her now we will never get through this little tour. I don't have the patience to deal with it."  
  
Embarrassed, the Yeerk answered, "Forgive me, Visser Thirty-eight. I know."  
  
"Then start handling the situation. What morphs do you want?"  
  
"There's a magnificent Earth animal one of the Animorphs used to use." He sifted through my memories. "A tiger. That's it."  
  
"Strictly off-limits. That is Sub-visser Two's morph and he is extremely possessive of it. He has decreed that no morph-capable, especially one with a rank inferior to his own, acquire it."  
  
He curved my lips into a frown. "Any other restrictions?"  
  
"Not particularly."  
  
"I want one of the big cat morphs, as you call them. They're graceful, silent, and deadly, an excellent combination. What are my choices?"  
  
"We have a leopard, at the moment."  
  
"A leopard?" Once again, he hunted through my knowledge of Earth. Having found it, he replied, "I'll acquire that. What else do I need?"  
  
She snatched a hand through her short hair in annoyance. "What am I - your keeper?"  
  
I felt the Yeerk's fear of this seemingly harmless girl. "Forgive me, Visser Thirty-eight. I merely value your expertise as a morph-capable. I did not mean to -"  
  
"You'll need an insect, a bird, a water morph, at least two battle morphs, and a few nocturnal animals," she snapped in quick, staccato syllables.  
  
"What do you recommend?"  
  
"Fly, harrier, shark, leopard, elephant, bat, owl. You can find the owl and the harrier at the barn my host's parents own. The elephant, leopard, and shark can be acquired here. A fly can be acquired anywhere. Hurry up. Get the leopard first - we're closest to that." She stalked towards the door she'd indicated earlier. Fearfully, my Yeerk followed.  
  
{Why are you so scared of her?}  
  
{She could rip me apart,} he snapped. {Do you know how much power lies in a morph-capable? Do you know what kind of morphs that Yeerk has?}  
  
{She couldn't kill you,} I pointed out. {You have a morph-capable host yourself, and from what I've gathered, they're too valuable to kill.}  
  
{You're right.} I heard shock in his telepathic voice. {I can't believe it. For once you're right about something. But that's not the point. I wasn't even supposed to get this host; I was a common Yeerk, expecting a common human or possibly Hork-Bajir host. My rank is very low. I am two hundred and eight units below the lowest sub-visser. She is a visser, higher than the highest sub-visser. I --}  
  
{So what could they do?} I interrupted.  
  
{Remove me from you and give me a new, non-morph-capable host. A normal host. I want to keep this power, Taylor. I will not lose it now. But if I can capture the last remaining Animorph, Tobias, my rank will rise rapidly. I will be like Visser Eight, the former Aximili, whose climb resembles --}  
  
{You should probably move faster.} I cut him off, again. {This Cassie seems very annoyed by you already.}  
  
Wordlessly, he lengthened my strides.  
  
Cassie spun around. "I almost forgot. Xanos, you have an immediate assignment pending."  
  
He raised both eyebrows. Excitement radiated from him in waves. "Yes?"  
  
"Capture Rachel Berenson." She turned back around and pulled a key from her pocket to unlock the first door.  
  
"What? They told me she was captured when I infested this host!"  
  
"That was three hours ago," she said drily. "She was captured -- but she escaped. Some of us believe Tobias saved her, but no one knows. Tom and Peric 136 were both knocked unconscious and never saw what happened."  
  
"The Yeerk empire hunted those kids for this long without success and now it's my assignment to finish the job?"  
  
"Not without success!" Cassie bristled. "In case you're forgetting, sixty- seven percent of them have already been captured. There are only two left. And you're not working alone; Visser Eight and Sub-visser Twenty will be helping you."  
  
{Who are they?}  
  
{Their host bodies are Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill and Marco. It is an honor to work with them.}  
  
{How are you going to capture them?} I asked eagerly.  
  
{I have no idea. But since it's a shared assignment, at least it won't be solely my responsibility.}  
  
"Are you prepared to handle this?" demanded Cassie.  
  
I felt my body swallow hard. "Yes, Visser." 


	22. R: Reunions

Tobias knew without asking that I needed him to be human.  
  
"There." He indicated a tree with a sweep of two long, thin fingers. "I've been staying in that tree at night, since my old territory is crawling with Yeerks." He laughed mirthlessly. "Who knows how many birds they've captured looking for me?"  
  
I nodded. "When did you figure it out?"  
  
"When Ax came looking for me, telling me that we had a meeting."  
  
My brow wrinkled. "What tipped you off?"  
  
He shrugged. "I hang out with Ax for hours every day, Rachel. I know him better than anyone. I was a little wary anyway, because I knew he'd spent more time than the rest of us in the pool. I guess I was just looking for it." He looked away. "What about you?"  
  
"I saw Jake in Chapman's office. At first Cassie didn't seem concerned, but then she seemed too concerned. She went looking for Marco and barked at me to just get to class and she'd handle everything. But Cassie doesn't give orders like that."  
  
"Yeah." He trailed off and turned to me. "Rachel, what the hell are we going to do?"  
  
"I don't know," I whispered. "I don't. They're looking for us everywhere, especially the old Animorphs." Abruptly, I remembered that he didn't know what I'd been doing for the past few days. "And they almost took the box."  
  
"The box?" Tobias raised an eyebrow quizzically.  
  
"The box," I repeated, like an echo. "The box that gave us the power to morph. The Yeerks have it."  
  
He said a word I would have expected from Marco.  
  
"Some David kid found it in the construction site, and I scared him into putting it down. The girl I was staying with took it -"  
  
"What? You've been staying with someone? Does she know about you?"  
  
"She's a Controller now," I told him flatly. "The Sharing came to help her after the fire, and they knew she'd seen me."  
  
"How?"  
  
He narrowed his eyes and I sighed, realizing how long it would take to explain, and realizing that there were parts of it I didn't ever want to explain. I massaged a hand over my forehead and started from the beginning - from my first run after I saw Cassie to the cat morph at Taylor's to trailing her at school to the construction site to the fire. With every sentence I saw the expression in his eyes darken. The line of his mouth tightened, pulling his face into one rigid scowl.  
  
When I was done, he stood in silence for a moment, then spoke softly. "Why were you following her, Rachel?"  
  
"I had nowhere else to go," I snapped. "I thought everyone was captured. I thought they were going to capture you. I needed a life."  
  
I had the distinct sensation that this was not what he wanted to hear.  
  
"You just wanted revenge," he shot back in fury. "You wanted to kill as many Yeerks as you could and you were glad the rest of us moralizing fools were gone so we wouldn't stop you! You wanted her as a sacrifice, to consummate your new purpose in life, to prove to yourself that you're ruthless. You are sick, Rachel."  
  
His words flowed past without cutting me, but I didn't know how to respond to them. I shrugged, affecting nonchalance.  
  
There was a long silence before I cleared my throat. "Tell me what's happened since I've been gone. Tom told me a little of it."  
  
He would not look at me. "What did he tell you?"  
  
"That Jake had his parents infested, Marco had his father infested, Ax is working on breakthrough Yeerk-Andalite technology and Cassie is an executioner of those in the peace movement." I took a seat at the base of a tree.  
  
He sat down across from me, near the tree where he stayed at night. "Those are the basics. The Yeerk invasion is now completely unchecked. But they're slowing down a little, too. They know that they have all the time in the world to take over an unsuspecting Earth. Their focus is on two issues: finding us, and creating new technology." He paused, staring up at the sky framed between tree branches. "Now that you have the box, we could create a new army to fight them."  
  
"I don't want a new army. I want the others back."  
  
"That may not be an option. Where is the box?"  
  
"I hid it. In the construction site."  
  
"You know that's the first place they'll look."  
  
"No, it's not. They're still looking for me. They'll check Taylor's house first, and then start going through the woods. We have time to get the box." I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "I didn't have that many options."  
  
He sighed deeply and wrapped his arms around his knees. "I know. I'm sorry, Rachel."  
  
"You're still angry at me."  
  
"For what you planned to do to another human being? For leaving her in the fire? Yes. I am. You're not a Yeerk, Rachel."  
  
I shrugged, thinking: Maybe I am. "Sometimes you have to become the enemy to win the war."  
  
"I don't want you to."  
  
I changed a glance at him. I knew why he did not want me to. "Sometimes I have to be, Tobias. Sometimes we both will. We're alone, now. We're all that's left."  
  
"You know we can't stop them." Tobias ran a hand through his hair slowly.  
  
"We have to do whatever we can to. slow them down, then." I swallowed. "You know that at the end we'll be killed. Or captured."  
  
"I know." He smiled and stretched out his hand. "Free or dead."  
  
I took it. "Free or dead."  
  
Author's Note: Chapter 22! It will probably be about ten more chapters before I'm through with this. In the meantime, I looked up one of my old stories, Trial by Fire. I'm trying to decide whether or not to continue it. There's an original character, which I hate writing, but the plot may have potential. Please read it and let me know what you think of it. The link is here: In other news, I'm going to begin a new Jake fic soon, and I'm plotting it out now. Look for it soon in a Just-In page near you! 


	23. R: Just Like Old Times

I breathed in deeply, excited and energized and slightly afraid. {This is insane.}

{Hey, that's Marco's line,} Tobias reminded me. 

{But he's not here to say it, and I'll feel weird if it isn't said.} 

{Mm. What about your line?} 

{It's been a while since I've said this.} I took another deep breath. {Let's do it!} 

We landed just outside the school, opening our wings and gently swooping down on the well-fertilized grass. I huddled beneath Chapman's window and began to demorph, feathers melting into skin; Tobias's feathers melted instead into the snow-white fur of the polar bear. 

{I wonder how long we have until someone sees us,} I pondered, seconds before my beak softened into a human mouth. I crouched in my uncomfortable position behind some stupid decorative bush and prepared for my next morph. 

{Probably not long.} Black claws erupted from his wingtips. {I feel like singing an *NSync song. How pathetic is that?} 

"I think I know which one you mean." I cleared my throat for effect as grizzly fur spread over my leotard. "Here we go, one more time -" 

{Stop that!} cried a shaken Tobias. {It's eerie. You should never sing that band, Rachel. It's too wrong. What we're about to do is less scary than that song!} 

"- Everybody's feelin' fine, here we go now -" Mercifully for Tobias, I lost my ability to speak then. Claws bit down into my gums. I reveled in the power of my thin arms thickening to tree trunks. 

{Almost done?} asked Tobias, who'd only had one stage to go through instead of my two. 

{Give me a minute,} I grumbled. My delicate human toes fused into bear feet that could stomp a fence flat. {You have it easy, you know. You only have to go from bird to bear. I have to go from bird to girl to bear.} I finished my morph. {I think that the more I complain, the more I'll feel like Marco's here in spirit, and the more normal this will feel.} 

{Whatever works.} He grinned a bear grin and shifted his weight from paw to paw. He had obliterated his "decorative bush" and was exposed to anyone walking by. Fortunately, class was in session, and Chapman hadn't looked out his window yet. {Who wants to do the countdown?} 

{I do,} I said quickly. {Three! Two! One!} 

We bellowed loudly and plunged through the semi-brick wall of the school. 

{_Ow_!} 

Chapman looked up then. 

"Andalites!" he yelped. 

{I think that was instinctive, but just so we're all being honest here: We're Animorphs.} I slapped him in the face with a bear fist. He groaned and fell flat, bleeding from the nose and, to be honest, oozing from several dents in his face. {I should probably feel guilty about punching one of my friend's fathers. But to be honest, I don't.} 

{This could actually work,} Tobias observed in disbelief. He lumbered behind the door, shoving a file cabinet roughly out of his way. 

{I know. But don't jinx it.} I began to demorph, exhausted from all the changes already. {Hey, Tobias?} 

{Yeah?} 

{This was a great plan. More like me than you, really, but still a great plan. I don't know what I'd do without you.} 

He showed his teeth in what I guessed was a bear smile. {No problem, Rachel. I'll always be here for you.} 

{I suppose I have one more morph to do, don't I?} 

{Just one. Then maybe, just maybe, this nightmare will start to end.} 

I sighed through my now-human lips. "I really don't want to morph Chapman. That's just so deeply wrong it's insane. I don't want to be a guy." I knelt and began stripping Chapman's clothes off, shuddering at the mere thought of exactly what I was doing. "I hope I can leave him enough fabric to be decent." 

As I pulled on Chapman's pants, Tobias snickered mockingly. {You're _so_ hot in those.} He paused. {I think I just sounded like Marco. Maybe I'll kill myself once this is over.} 

"They're only about ten sizes too big," I muttered, jerking on his shirt. "Wow. He needs to get a tan." 

{And go to the gym more often.} 

"You're awful." I grinned at him. "We're both completely high, aren't we? Because there's light at the end of the tunnel and hope and maybe, just maybe, we can get this little group back together." 

{Or maybe it's that adrenaline high you get when one wrong move means the end of everything.} 

"That too." I buttoned up his shirt over my slender body and began the morph. Abruptly, my body wasn't so slender anymore. "So this is what I'll look like in thirty years," I commented as wrinkles creased my thickening face. 

{Assuming we all live another thirty years. Hurry up. This place makes me nervous, and I never did like schools anyway.} He sat down like a dog. A very big, white, clawed, deadly dog. 

I waited another minute while the morph finished. "All done," I said in a very deep voice. Unable to resist, I added, "Here we go, one more -" 

{Stop it!} 

"I'm easing the tension." I crossed over to the intercom system. "Which button? Do we know what Jake's class is right now?" 

{You should. This is third period. Didn't you have it together?} 

"That's right, Theater Arts." I punched the button for Mr. Halstead's room and spoke in Chapman's voice. "Mr. Halstead?"

I waited until I heard the teacher yell "Yes?" 

"Please send Jake Berenson to my office." 

"Yes, sir." 

I shut the intercom off. "Tobias, could you drag that body out of the line of sight? Someone could walk by any second." 

He jerked it over behind him. We waited. 

Eventually, after an eternity, the office door opened. "What is it, Mr. Chapman?" my cousin asked in the perfect parody of an innocent, worried teenager before the assistant principal. He clicked the door shut behind him and turned with the cold smile of a Yeerk. He hadn't seen Tobias yet; he was still looking at me. 

I smiled with a rush of euphoria and looked into empty eyes that were not empty at all. "Never give up, Jake." 

He stared at me for a moment before it clicked into place. Tobias promptly felled him from behind before he could even scream. 

"I can't believe it," I whispered. "We did it." 

{Hurry,} Tobias said urgently as he demorphed to hawk. {Acquire him. Lourdes will be here to replace him in a minute and we need to get out of here as quickly as possible after that!} 

"I'm demorphing, I'm demorphing! Do you have any idea how exhausting this is?" 

{It doesn't matter! Hurry!} 

There was a knock on the door and I saw a student I didn't recognize. She tapped on the glass four times in a quick, frantic rhythm. I opened the door quickly with hands that were half-Rachel, half-Chapman. Disturbing, to say the least. 

"Rachel, Tobias. I'm here." The hologram melted away to reveal a Chee. "Congratulations. I have to leave quickly. I'm risking enough to come out of hiding for this long." 

"I know. Thank you, Lourdes." 

Suddenly it was Jake standing before me. "If your plan works everything will be worth it," Lourdes told me in his voice. 

"Then pray that it does." I knelt down and pressed two fingers to the unconscious boy's neck as she left, headed for Halstead's class. "Got his DNA. I'm going to go elephant to get him out of here." I knew they'd try to stop us - sheer luck that we got in without being stopped, no chance of it on the way out. "If anyone tries, Tobias, you know I'll do whatever I have to." 

{I know. That's the plan.} He flapped his forming wings. {Let's go.} 


	24. T: Plans Revealed

In a dark cavern deep below the surface of my city, all the normal things like malls and schools and offices and libraries, aliens thrived. This came as a shock to me when I first looked out over the gray-brown sludge, but by that point I could assimilate anything.

{This is where we live,} the Yeerk told me, turning my eyes towards the pool. {Isn't it beautiful.}

{It looks like an entree I'd find in the school cafeteria,} I answered, {so no, not particularly.}

{Your Earth planet is beautiful, Taylor. Ours is not. Ours is like this. Can you blame us for wanting to see your sky, your oceans, your trees, with our own eyes?}

{You mean with _our_ eyes,} I pointed out. {Such a shallow reason to invade a planet. You say you want to crush worlds to admire a flower. It doesn't make sense.}

{You should understand,} he said angrily. {You were willing to sacrifice anything to be beautiful. We are willing to sacrifice anything to see beauty.}

{No. You want to sacrifice anyone _else_ to be _powerful._ This isn't about beauty. You want to wipe out our planet, not nurture it and write gardening books about how to take care of it.}

He laughed. {Where did you hear that we want to wipe out your planet? From alien sci-fi movies? Coincidentally, you're right. We always butcher the planets we take over.}

{Why?}

{Because we are not beautiful. Nothing else should be, either.} I noted the bitterness in his voice. He poked at my thoughts. {You understand, don't you? Worse yet, you agree. If you were not pretty you would kill all the pretty things yourself.} He chuckled.

Quietly, I asked, {Most of the humans down here are in cages or doing something useful. Why are some watching TV?}

{The ones who are doing something useful are infested, like you. The ones who are in cages are temporarily free – we have to feed every three days, so their Yeerks are in the pool. The ones who are watching TV are voluntary hosts. They want us in their heads. They have seen that we are more powerful than they are, smarter than they are, more capable than they are. They don't care if we take over this planet. Which are you going to be, Taylor?} He paused. {As if I didn't know.}

{I don't have any loyalties to anyone, now. I've been betrayed by everyone.}

I heard him smirk in my head, but he did not comment. {Well. Continuing. Anything else you'd like to know?}

{What are those dinosaur-like things? And the centipedes?}

{Host bodies from other worlds we've conquered. They're the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxons, respectively. Most Hork-Bajir are involuntary and most Taxxons are voluntary.}

I considered. {What are you going to do now?}

{I must find Sub-visser Twenty and Visser Eight. Meeting Visser Eight will be interesting for you. His host Aximili is an Andalite – a very interesting host body.}

{If they both have former Animorph host bodies, why are their ranks so different?}

{Unofficially? Because Visser Eight snatches all the glory from Sub-visser Twenty's accomplishments. In addition, he's slightly more ruthless and his host knows much about Andalite technology, as well. And, finally, because Yeerk empire loves the concept of defeated Andalites and calls attention to them wherever possible. There are only two, you know.}

{Who's the other one?}

{Visser Three. Not that he'll be Visser Three for long. He's lined up for promotion to Visser Two very soon.}

{Is his host one of the Animorphs?}

He laughed. {No. His host is the very first Andalite ever to be captured. You may see him, too – but pray that you don't.}

I began to feel dread welling up inside me. The reality of where I stood hit me; I was underground in a chamber from which aliens were taking over Earth. And I would never escape, even if I wanted to.

But did I want to?

{Xanos 208.}

My body spun at the harsh voice behind me. The Yeerk directed my eyes to the creature that had spoken. It was not like the Hork-Bajir or the Taxxons; it was entirely different. Blue skin; four legs; a centaur meshed with a scorpion; two antennae swinging at the top of its head, with two eyes perched on them. Two green eyes like gems stared at me from its face. Horrified and fascinated, I stared.

{Your host bears quite a resemblance to one of the remaining Animorphs,} the creature commented. {And I understand that this body is morph-capable as well?}

"Yes, Visser Eight," my Yeerk said in a respectful, almost servile voice. "Speaking of Rachel Berenson, you have been informed that I am assigned to work with you, I assume."

{Yes.} Visser Eight turned and began to trot slowly towards one of the doors embedded in the rock. {Follow me.}

I felt my legs began to move and was still a little surprised that I had no control over their actions.

{Sub-visser twenty is waiting in here,} he told Xanos. {We have been working on a little bit of new technology, combining principles behind the famed Escafil Device with glorious Yeerk intelligence.}

{Escafil device?} I asked my Yeerk.

{The box you lost,} he responded in a quick, clipped tone. Speaking to the visser again, he asked, "What does this instrument do?"

One of the stalk eyes swiveled to look at me. {It will find any creature that touches it, based on the DNA pattern.}

{How does that help us?} I demanded of Xanos. {If Rachel got down here to touch it in the first place, wouldn't she already be captured?}

{He'll explain in a moment, I'm sure. Your first lesson, Taylor: Never question vissers. In the best case you'll be humiliated. In the worst case you'll be killed.}

The Andalite punched a long number in the keypad next to the door. It slid open, revealing a short Hispanic boy a year or two younger than I was.

"Xanos 208," he greeted us calmly.

"Sub-visser twenty," Xanos acknowledged.

Visser Eight indicated a small pyramid on a table. One side was black; the other two sides were like computer screens, displaying numbers and words that made no sense to me. {We're still perfecting it, Xanos; it will be done in less than a week.}

"While I'm honored to be involved with this project, I don't understand how I can be of help to you."

The Andalite sighed telepathically and turned to face me – or Xanos, more accurately. {We need Rachel Berenson's DNA. I understand that you have it.}

There was a slight pause. "Ah. I understand now. Yes, I have it."

{You do?} I asked, puzzled. {What do you mean?}

{You acquired it, Taylor. We can morph her at any time. And once we touch that pyramid, the computer will lock on the real Rachel's location.} He laughed. "Your plan is genius, Visser," he said through my mouth. Sub-visser twenty looked disgruntled.

{Yes,} Visser Eight said proudly. {In a matter of days, I will be in the Council of Thirteen.} 


	25. R: Starvation

"You know this won't do any good."

I folded my arms over my chest and shrugged. "That doesn't matter to you, Yeerk. You won't be alive to find out."

"They have a tracking device embedded under this host's skin. They'll be here in a matter of hours."

{You're lying,} accused Tobias, perched on my shoulder. {If that was true, you wouldn't have told us. It would give us a chance to escape, which you wouldn't want.}

Jake bared his teeth in an ugly snarl. "Quite the psychologist, aren't you, Bird Boy? Fatherless little Bird Boy. Motherless little Bird Boy. Bird Boy with no one to care about you at all, as a matter of fact."

Tobias sighed and glanced at me. {I guess he thinks that bothers me.}

"Sad, isn't it?" I agreed. "Listen, Yeerk. We nabbed you a day before your feed date on purpose. It means we don't have to put up with you for as long. In the meantime, we do have one day with you. Let me make this clear: Nothing you say is going to persuade us to let you go, so why not shut up and make it easier for all of us?"

"You're heartless," he snapped. "Jake has already gone through his Yeerk starving once. It's hell for the host too, you know. Are you going to put him through that again?"

{Do you listen to yourself?} Tobias demanded in disbelief. {Why not let the real Jake speak for a few minutes and tell us how depressed he is that we're going to kill you?}

"Yeah," I said drily. "I'm sure his heart is just breaking with sympathy."

The Yeerk glowered.

{Keep an eye on him, Rachel,} Tobias told me. {I'm going to take a look around and make sure no one's coming.}

"It's futile, hawk," Sub-visser Two snapped. "You know they'll be looking for me."

{Looking for you?} Tobias snorted as he flapped out the door of the shack. {They don't even know you're missing.}

The Yeerk eyed me. "What's he talking about?"

"While you were unconscious, we made arrangements." I shrugged. "Let's leave it at that."

"The Chee?"

I leaned the chair back against the wall, rocking on the back two legs. "So you didn't get promoted this far by being stupid. Didn't make it quite as high as Ax's Yeerk did, though. Or Cassie's. That must bother you. Not that it matters now."

He sneered. "I would have advanced that high in time. I still will. You know that these little ropes won't hold me for a full day."

"Of course I do. But we've been through this before," I pointed out cheerfully. "You'll morph, and we'll morph, and we'll run you down because there's almost nothing you can do to lose us. Besides which, Tobias will be in morph at all times, ready to blind you or keep you busy until I morph something big enough to crush you." I tapped my index finger against my chin thoughtfully. "Chances are you won't even get fully morphed before we stop you."

"Do you have any idea what kind of morphs I have now?" he screeched. "I could destroy you!"

"That may well be, but once again, you probably couldn't even finish the morph." I shrugged. "Isn't that fugue starting soon? Something like that? I know you're looking forward to it."

"You don't understand what it's like! You'll never understand what that is for a Yeerk!"

{So come out and we'll kill you quickly,} Tobias interrupted, swooping down to my shoulder again. {No? Don't like that option either?}

I glanced at him. "Nothing's coming?"

{No.} He curved his head around and pulled out a stray feather.

"There's one little thing you might not have thought about, little Animorphs," the Yeerk said suddenly. "Chapman's office is under a surveillance system. There are cameras everywhere. And people come in and out daily. Chapman will wake up soon, and then everyone will know you were there. You destroyed a wall of the school – do you honestly think no one will notice?"

"We took out the cameras," I said sharply. "And someone's... covering for the wall, so to speak. And Chapman."

The Yeerk's eyes narrowed. "You couldn't have destroyed all those cameras. How would you know where they are?"

I just smiled and looked at Tobias.

{I have to say,} he said privately, {that getting Erek to locate and erase all those security tapes was not easy. Neither was convincing him to impersonate Chapman like Lourdes is impersonating Jake. He wasn't all that happy about coming out of hiding... but when push came to shove he was there for us, as usual. Even down to casting a hologram over that wall.}

I nodded, knowing he hadn't let the Yeerk hear him. Erek had been jumpy about running the risk of exposure – especially since, from what Tobias had told me, the Chee had been nearly annihilated after the Animorphs were captured. Only a few were left.

"You're lying," the Yeerk said desperately. "There's no way you could have taken care of all those cameras. Or the wall. Or Chapman! Even if someone was covering for him, what happened to Chapman himself? You sanctimonious Animorphs don't kill people."

Tobias looked away. I shrugged. The Yeerk stared.

"We made a choice." I brushed my hair back behind my ear. "There isn't always an easy way out, Yeerk. We made a choice comparing one human to all the humans in our country, our continent, the world. Guess who won."

"You killed him! You loved it, Rachel, didn't you? The license to kill!" The Yeerk looked desperate.

"No. I didn't love it," I retorted honestly. "He was my friend's father; I used to look up to him. But you know our motto, Yeerk. Free or dead."

He closed his eyes and heaved out one last hopeless shot at me. "You can't make that choice for others."

"Sometimes we have to. Spare me the moralizing, Yeerk. It's too hypocritical for you."

{You do what you have to do,} Tobias said unexpectedly before lapsing back into silence. I knew he felt guilty about what I – we – had done, but he had accepted it. He was trying to share the blame for it.

I sighed deeply and pulled my knees up to my chest.

"What are you going to do now, Animorph? Try to get the other members of your little team free? Try to take back everything you've lost?" The Yeerk writhed with the ropes around his hands.

"Not just yet." I shrugged. "Now, we're just going to wait."

After another hour of sitting there in silence, Sub-visser Two began to scream. I knew the fugue had come. Our wait was almost at an end. 


	26. T: Cassie

It had been three long days since I was infested. During that time, Xanos had done nothing. I was very bored.  
  
I could not go back to my mother or my school, even if I'd wanted to (which I didn't); how could modern medicine explain my vanished wounds, the reappearance of my limbs, the recovered sight in my eye? The Yeerks had instead faked my death. The doctor and nurses belonged to them, and now, so did my mother. Through her everyone else had learned that Taylor had died in the hospital and had a small funeral. Everyone accepted this. No one wanted to think about me.  
  
The three days passed uneventfully. Xanos constantly experimented with morphs. At first they fascinated me, but eventually, since I couldn't even feel the changes occurring in my body, it bored me. I realized that what was left of my life would pass in this empty, boring state as well.  
  
Boredom. What a wonderful word to sum up a life with.  
  
I knew that Xanos had to feed that day, and at least that was a new experience, something to look forward to. I also knew that for a few minutes I'd be free. The prospect didn't excite me. Apathy had almost entirely overcome my emotions.  
  
{Am I going to be classified as a voluntary or involuntary host?} I asked Xanos as we lined up on the long pier. All around me I heard screams of despair. They didn't affect me.  
  
{By default, you'll be involuntary,} he answered. {The empire is very cautious with its morph-capables. We couldn't have you suddenly decide to run for it and morph into a fly.}  
  
{What if I wasn't morph-capable? What would I be?}  
  
He hesitated. {I don't know. What would you be, Taylor?}  
  
{I just don't care,} I whispered. {I don't care how I live anymore.}  
  
{I know. That's what makes it hard to decide. Most hosts at least like it or dislike it. You.} He trailed off. {I'm going to feed.}  
  
I wondered if I'd miss his presence in my head. I didn't think so. But at the same time I felt a fear of the responsibility controlling myself again would bring.  
  
{You'll be held near Cassie, one of the former Animorphs. She and Aximili feed today, but they're held in separate areas since Aximili as an Andalite is naturally more deadly. It will be an interesting experience for you to meet Cassie.}  
  
{Haven't I already met her?}  
  
{Not really. You met Visser Thirty-eight. They're as separate as you and I are.}  
  
{I see. Why will it be so interesting for me to meet her?}  
  
{Because you are opposites.}  
  
{How so?}  
  
{She fights for everything good and right and moral, all concepts foreign to us Yeerks. You don't fight for anything. She is something and you are nothing, however empty and human those ideas are.}  
  
{Are she and I more different than Rachel and I are?}  
  
Again, he hesitated. {I think so. I don't know. Stop talking,} he snapped irritably. {I don't have time for these foolish questions.}  
  
We were almost to the end of the pier. The man two humans in front of me knelt down. The Hork-Bajir put their hands on each of his shoulders to hold him still, but as he stood up, he shrugged them off. Two waiting Hork- Bajir led him to the voluntary section. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him sit on a ragged sofa and begin making small talk with the people next to him.  
  
Ten it was the next man's turn. Once again, the bored Hork-Bajir held his shoulders still, but this time as soon as the slug hit the water the man began to scream.  
  
"Help me! Help! Please, let me go!"  
  
Xanos sighed. {When I first came here I thought they'd have enough pride to stop screaming after a while, but they still do. Every time.}  
  
{All of them?} Fascinated, I watched the man struggle.  
  
"Let me go!" he begged again as his pair of Hork-Bajir dragged him to a cage. "I can't live like this, I can't -"  
  
{Are they going to put me in one of those?}  
  
{No. You're going to be chained to a wall and under much heavier guard. If you try to morph they'll stun you at a moment's notice, I'll warn you in advance.} To the Hork-Bajir, he said, "Morph-capable."  
  
With that, he was out; my body knelt down and the Yeerk slipped easily out of my ear and deep within the sludge.  
  
The Hork-Bajir grabbed my arms roughly. I felt a sudden rush of panic and twisted in their grasp. One grabbed both my wrists and grunted an alien command. I froze and walked relatively willingly to my spot at the wall.  
  
There were shackles hanging from the cold stone. The two lizards chained my wrists first, then my ankles, and then wrapped one long chain around my waist and hooked it back. I waited for them to head back to the pier, but instead they lifted their Dracon beams and stood on either side of me.  
  
"You're Taylor, aren't you?" said a soft voice I didn't recognize as the one I'd heard three days ago. I twisted my head, looking past the Hork- Bajir to see the same short, dark girl I'd seen before.  
  
"Yes. You're Cassie?"  
  
She nodded. "I'd heard that you were voluntary, but obviously you're not," she commented with a slight tone of relief.  
  
"I'm not involuntary," I said quickly, resenting the label. "They put all morph-capables in shackles. You should know that."  
  
Cassie stared at me. "I wouldn't know that. There's never been a voluntary morph-capable before."  
  
"I disgust you, don't I?"  
  
She hesitated, like my Yeerk had; I realized that no one knew what to make of me. "Yes. You do. After all the fighting we did and all the things we suffered and all the battles we nearly died in - for freedom - I don't understand how any one can surrender freedom voluntarily."  
  
I knew I should have felt ashamed, but I didn't. "Tell me what happened after you all were captured."  
  
She closed her eyes. "The Hork-Bajir were reinfested. The Chee were destroyed. We were infested. Our parents were infested. The animals at my clinic died because my father closed it down on pretenses of not having funds. There must have been thirty animals in there and he let them all die."  
  
I saw tears in her eyes and was shocked that out of her speech the animals were what affected her most.  
  
"I thought Hork-Bajir were all infested already."  
  
"There was a colony of free Hork-Bajir that escaped. They've all been recaptured but five - Toby, Jara Hamee, Ket Halpak, and two young Hork- Bajir." Her voice was bitter. "I don't even remember their names."  
  
"You said 'Chee.' What are those?"  
  
"Advanced robots that helped us. They were almost invulnerable, but the Yeerks just kept blasting them with Dracon beams for hours until they." She swallowed.  
  
The four Hork-Bajir guarding us huffed a smug laugh and exchanged glances.  
  
"They were just robots. What difference does it make?" I wondered.  
  
"Sentient robots. Robots capable of emotion." Her hands twisted in the shackles.  
  
"Are there any left?"  
  
She glanced at the Hork-Bajir. "I think so. Erek, Lourdes, and Mr. King. We hadn't met Lourdes personally, but Erek knew her well and warned her in time to escape. The others weren't so lucky. We think there might still be a few left somewhere." She looked back at me. "Doesn't any of this reach you? Don't you understand what we fought for? Why would you give it up?"  
  
I shrugged and turned my head the other way, resting my cheek against the cool, slick surface of the wall. I waited for Xanos to finish feeding. I didn't want to be in control anymore.  
  
[A/N: I caught my mistake in Chapter 23 too late - in book #17 the Animorphs hadn't met Lourdes yet. But I am prepared to defend myself! Although she hadn't met them, Erek would have still known her and when Rachel and Tobias asked for help, he could have introduced her. So mwah.] 


	27. R: Recovery Project

"Wake up, Rachel." I felt a sharp nudge in my ribs and groaned.

"Go away, Jordan," I mumbled. "'M sleepy."

"I'm not Jordan. Get up."

{Wake up, Rachel.}

"Aah!" I jumped up as a sharp beak nudged my hand. "I'm up! Get off me!"

{Well, I feel loved,} Tobias said dryly.

I suddenly felt uncomfortable and embarrassed. Jake was standing with folded arms and Tobias was flapping back up to land on the chair in the shack. Both had probably been awake for at least a half hour, and I'd been sprawled on a dirty floor sleeping for hours. I felt oddly guilty for needing sleep.

"Sorry," Jake apologized. "We'd been at you for ten minutes before we started poking you."

"Yeah." I stood up and brushed my hair out of my eyes, thinking that if Marco was here he'd make some smart comment about my hair not even being dirty. I grabbed a clump of hair and examined it. A little dirty. Not much.

{Rachel, what are you doing?}

"Channeling Marco." I pushed the strands behind my ear. "Sorry I slept in."

"You deserved it," Jake said. "Tobias told me how much you've been through."

I shrugged, thinking I hadn't handled everything as well as I should, but accepted the compliment. If it was a compliment. "Yeah. No excuse to start slacking off. We need to get Marco and Cassie and Ax back."

"And we need to get Erek and Lourdes out of the school," Jake agreed. "You don't know what could happen to them if they're caught."

I stared at him for a moment, realizing that for the past few weeks I had been completely in control of what I did and I had answered to no one, and that now, Jake was the leader again. I wasn't sure whether or not I was relieved to give someone else the proverbial reins, and decided that having Jake back was worth it. I'd take having the group back over my independence any day.

{What are we going to do?} Tobias asked, ruffling his feathers slightly and preening at his wings. {Jake, what do we need to know that we don't?}

Jake sighed. "There's a hole with no bottom."

"First things first." I waited until both of them were looking at me. "We have to get Cassie and Marco back. At least they go to school. Ax doesn't. If they find out what we're doing they'll put Chapman's office under higher security and Erek will be running a serious risk."

{She's right. But Jake, you shouldn't go. It's too dangerous. Rachel and I have done this before.}

Jake looked like he was going to protest for a moment, but then he nodded. "You two go in. I'll morph falcon and make sure no one's watching you."

I took a deep breath. "Another mission today, huh?" I said with my trademark smile. "Well, it's just as well. Life was getting boring. Let's do it."

* * *

{Erek?} Tobias called. {Erek. If you can hear us, turn off the office light and then turn it back on.}

It flicked on and off. {Let's hope it's him in there and not a Controller,} I muttered.

{Let's go.} Tobias spilled air from his wings and swept into a steep dive. {Turn off the force field, Erek,}

{Is this what they call trust?} I wondered, a split second before we rocketed into the wall. I braced for impact but passed harmlessly through Erek's hologram. Relatively harmlessly, anyway. I did crash into the desk.

"Graceful, Rachel," Erek said, shedding his imitation of Chapman. "Don't worry; there's another hologram over the office door. No one can see us. You can demorph, Rachel."

We did. I immediately began remorphing to grizzly. {Make sure we're invisible, Erek,} I requested uneasily.

"Will do. I put an extra hologram in front of the back wall. You can hide there."

{Hope there's enough room.} I lumbered into position as black claws sprung from my pink nails.

Tobias dropped on the floor beside me. He chuckled. {I feel so awkward without something to perch on.}

{It should be over fast.}

"Ready?" Erek asked.

{Yeah,} Tobias answered. {All morphed, Rachel?}

{Absolutely,} I confirmed as the last change finished. {Let's do it.} I felt better once I said that.

"I checked her class schedule. I know where to page her," he said unnecessarily, and I realized he was nervous too. Of course he was - posing as a Controller in a Yeerk's office with massive security. He punched a button on the intercom and cleared his throat. "Hello, Ms. Moore. Please send Cassie to my office."

"Of course," a young woman answered. I dimly remembered that she'd taught chemistry.

I was supposed to take that next semester. Yeah, right.

"She'll be here in a second." Erek relaxed behind the desk. "It's comfortable in here. Lots of books. Nothing I haven't read before, but enough to keep me busy."

{We appreciate what you're doing, Erek,} said Tobias. {Hopefully it will be over in a few days. We just need Marco and Cassie back, and then.}

{It might actually be to our advantage to wreck this office,} I voiced thoughtfully. {Let them try to cover that up. At the very least, there would be questions. It's not like they could claim some kids did it.}

{They could claim some kids used dynamite to do it,} Tobias suggested.

"Nonetheless, she's right," Erek agreed. "There would be questions."

{Yeah.}

{Yeah,} Tobias echoed me.

I shifted my massive bulk. {So.} I paused. {There she is.}

Cassie opened the door and closed it with a soft click behind her. "Is there a problem, Iniss?"

{More of one than you might think,} I answered for Erek, stepping out of the wall. I grabbed a book from the shelf and struck her hard with it. She fell.

{You know, you could have just hit her,} Tobias rebuked me.

{It probably hurts worse to be hit with grizzly claws than a book,} I defended myself. I glanced at the book. {I hit her with Calculus.}

{I hear that's a heavy course,} Tobias deadpanned.

{Ha, ha.} I grabbed her around the waist and threw her over my shoulder like King Kong kidnapping whomever he kidnapped. {Let's get out of here.}

{Are we clear, Jake?} Tobias called.

A voice from the sky answered, {Looks like it. But you'd better hurry.}

{We'll be covering you, Rachel,} Tobias told me as he opened his wings and flapped upwards, rejoining Jake. {Thanks, Erek.}

"Anytime," the android answered.

{The Animorphs Recovery Project,} I said triumphantly, bolting for the woods, {is underway.} 


	28. R: Executioners

I loped up to the shack with Cassie still slung over my shoulder. {There's some rope in the corner,} I told Jake. {Tie her up.}  
  
He nodded obediently and picked it up. I dropped Cassie on the chair and held her there with my massive bear arms. He quickly began knotting the rope around her hands and feet.  
  
Right on cue, she groaned. "Animorph," she muttered, not opening her eyes, not fully conscious yet. She probably thought she was still in Chapman's office. "Iniss."  
  
{Iniss two-two-six is dead,} Tobias said coldly. {And very soon, you will be, too.}  
  
Her eyes snapped open and she tried to raise her arms to protect herself. I heard the scratch of old rope against flesh, but it was too thick to give way. As I began to morph, I smiled harshly, showing my teeth.  
  
{I don't like people that do this to my friends,} I commented softly. {I don't like them at all.}  
  
Jake took over, then. "We'll give you a choice, Yeerk. Three days of Kandrona starvation or we'll kill you quickly. Either way, you'll die."  
  
"They'll find you before three days is up," she snapped. "They'll realize I'm gone."  
  
{No, they won't. Someone is playing your part,} Tobias corrected with a smirk. {No one will ever know. You'll die and they won't even take notice.}  
  
Cassie's deep brown eyes widened. "The Chee!"  
  
"Yes," Jake answered. "The Chee. Mr. King, to be specific."  
  
"They'll be discovered," she argued weakly. "Everyone in the empire is looking for the remaining Chee."  
  
"No," I said, grinning dangerously with a now-human mouth. "Everyone in the empire is looking for me."  
  
"And they'll find you. You and that bird!" she spat. "They'll find you and kill you!"  
  
{Not in three days.}  
  
"Tobias is right." Jake nodded. "You can face it, or you can stay in denial. You are going to die."  
  
"Cassie doesn't want you to do it," Visser Thirty-eight said desperately. "She. she doesn't want anyone to be hurt. She's suffered enough."  
  
I snorted. "You're appealing to our pity for our friends? You're more of a fool than I thought."  
  
"My Yeerk tried that too," Jake commented dryly. "And yet, here I am. We're not going to bend, Visser."  
  
Cassie's body began to shake. "I don't want to die," she whimpered. "What do you want me to do? Just crawl out of this ear canal and wait to be crushed? Do you know what it's like to walk to your death?"  
  
{Better than anyone,} Tobias retorted.  
  
Impassively, I offered, "No one you killed wanted to die, either. But we'll give you more than you gave them. We'll give you a quick death."  
  
"No!" Cassie's mouth opened in a scream. Jake clapped his hand over her mouth and leaned down until he was almost whispered in her ear.  
  
"Do you know," he asked quietly, "what I would do to have Cassie free again?"  
  
The Yeerk went still.  
  
"There's nothing I wouldn't do to you. There's no death that's too harsh for you. I want you to starve, Yeerk. Do you want to spend three days with me? Really?"  
  
I smiled slightly at Tobias despite the gravity of the moment; that was as close to a declaration of love for Cassie that Jake had ever given.  
  
I saw surrender on Visser Thirty-eight's face. Then that face went blank.  
  
A grey edge appeared at Cassie's ear.  
  
Immediately, she started flailing. "Kill it!" she screamed. "Kill it now!"  
  
Jake snatched the slug out of her ear and threw his arms around her with the same desperation I'd felt when I saw Tobias. "Cassie."  
  
"Kill it," she sobbed helplessly. "Please kill it before it gets back inside."  
  
"It's not going to get back in you," Jake murmured soothingly. "It's over." He ripped open the knots and grabbed her hands. "Everything's over now."  
  
At last she went still. Jake buried his face in her shoulder.  
  
Tobias and I looked at each other and in wordless agreement stepped out. I picked up the Yeerk almost gently and carried it out with me. It writhed in my hands.  
  
I did not feel the same hatred for it that I had felt before. Not helpless, not about to die. I felt a sudden rush of pity.  
  
"I'm more like it than I am you," I said softly. "Tobias. I'm never going to be okay."  
  
{You're human, Rachel,} answered the hawk. {Not a Yeerk. And we'll all be okay.}  
  
I smiled weakly. "Can you be human too?"  
  
He swooped down and began to demorph instantly. When he was done, he took the Yeerk from me.  
  
"I'll take care of this," he told me. "You've done more than your part."  
  
I was grateful.  
  
But even so, my eyes were fixed on his hands as they tore the Yeerk in two.  
  
[A/N: Guess what I realized? This is right after book #17. The Animorph involvement with the peace movement began in #19. However, I'm going to leave the references in here - my apologies!] 


	29. T: Get Ready, Get Set

My Yeerk walked with strong, sharp strides towards the laboratory of Visser Eight and Sub-visser Twenty. He had gained confidence over the past few days. He no longer groveled quite as much and he stood taller before the visser and sub-visser than he had before... Xanos was beginning to taste the power he had dreamed of.

He punched in the code and I felt some odd delight at knowing what it was, as if it made me part of an inner circle as well -- not just the creature in my head. I felt like I was one of them.

I had accepted that I wanted to be one of them.

"Why?" any human would wonder. I had wondered at first, and at last I had defined my reasons. It was simple: I could never be an Animorph. Not someone like me. Fighting for all that was decent and just and kind and free -- Taylor? No. I didn't have the passion. I didn't have the beliefs.

But fighting for power? I could do that. I could envision the goals of these few, desperate, ugly slugs better than I could those of five kids and an alien that could change their shapes.

Xanos, as usual, read my thoughts.

{I don't know whether to feel contempt towards you or not,} he commented. {You... identify with us, which makes you wiser than most humans. But you betray your own race, and I think that at its core that horrifies and satisfies every one who sees it.}

His words rang true but I wanted to hear him explain them. {Satisfies?}

{Yes. We all want to believe that everyone is as corrupt as we are. You, Taylor, are proof that anyone, and everyone, is corrupt.}

{Explain.}

He obliged. {You were nothing more than a high school girl who wanted to be prom queen.}

{And probably would have been.}

{You see?} said Xanos, pleased. {That was your goal. That was the sphere of your life. Oh, you'd like to believe that you were something more, something deeper, something infinitely wise and intelligent. You'd like to believe that you were above all of those other little peons. You'd like to condescend to them, and say that you're different from others because you took pity on the lower class, so to speak, didn't scorn them as much as others – but in truth? Taylor, you were nothing more than another high school girl. Nothing more... maybe something a little less.}

{What's your point?} I asked coldly.

{You're what those idiot Animorphs were fighting for: the average. The people who had the opportunities for normality that they did not. People like you, ironically, are what this whole blasted war was fought for – and what do you do? You sympathize with us! For no reason except that you've driven yourself mad with vain fairy tales of how gorgeous and omnipotent you are and how everyone should worship you and if they won't worship you for your beauty you'll damn well find some other kind of power.}

{Human swear words?} I observed emotionlessly. {Here I thought you were so far above us.}

He snorted. {Corruption goes both ways, little girl. You adopt my mindset, I adopt your phrases. I think it's more than an even trade. Now shut up. I have business to attend to and I don't need you distracting me.}

My body stepped through the door and my head turned to look at an Andalite and a human. "Visser Thirty-eight. Sub-visser Twenty," Xanos acknowledged.

"Xanos 208," the sub-visser answered. He smiled a genuine, proud smile – something I hadn't seen Controllers do often. "We're done. The device is ready."

{Yes,} the visser agreed. {My creation is at last complete.}

The boy whirled around with a rage-filled face. "_What_?"

{You heard me.} He tilted his head. {It's done. My commendations on carrying out my specifications so quickly.}

"Are you deficient?" he snapped. "Blind? Forgetful? Are you ignoring how much work I have put into this? I designed almost all of it, you stupid fool!"

Visser Thirty-eight's two stalk eyes blinked once. {Come now, Sub-visser. Surely you're not asserting that _you're_ responsible for this.}

"I certainly am!" The sub-visser looked as though he'd explode. "You get credit for everything, Visser, because your host is an Andalite and mine is a human and people expect these technological advances from Andalite Controllers. But it's not the host that matters! It's the Yeerk! And I am more intelligent and capable than you can hope to be!"

{You forget your rank,} the visser rebuked calmly.

"This should be _your_ rank!"

"Ahem," Xanos said finally, clearing his throat.

The visser and sub-visser turned to him haughtily.

"All that matters to the Yeerk empire," my voice said, "is that it's ready."

After a slight pause, the sub-visser lowered his head. "My life belongs to the empire," he affirmed in a low voice. "I live only to see her advance."

Visser Thirty-eight laughed. {A noble sentiment. Some Yeerk scum live only for ambition. Fancy that.}

{Hypocrite,} Xanos muttered privately to me. {Almost all "Yeerk scum" live only for ambition. This sub-visser is an anomaly, so to speak.} Speaking openly again, he continued, "What must I do?"

"Place your hand on the device and you'll feel a slight electrical shock," the human Controller said. "It's not unlike acquiring the morphing power for the first time. After that your DNA will be stored in it and it will be capable of finding you anywhere. Capable of finding an individual with your DNA pattern, at least."

Xanos nodded and began to morph into Rachel. When he was done, and my body was not quite my own, he placed his hand on the pyramid and relaxed. A slight tingle flowed through him – through me, as well, but I was only an observer and I didn't feel anything in my body directly anymore.

"We'll begin scanning tomorrow," Sub-visser Twenty said in a subdued voice. "I have to feed. Directly after that we'll start the search..."

{Ridiculous. We'll start it tonight,} Visser Thirty-eight snapped.

Sub-visser Twenty laughed at him. "We need time to meet with the other two morph-capables and at least a small squadron of Hork-Bajir. You're not as much of a fool as you seem, Visser, so surely you must realize that this Rachel will attempt to escape. Also, Tobias still has not been found. If we rush in without preparation we will fail, and I won't have that on my record now. I'm sure you don't want it on yours."

Grudgingly, the visser turned away. {Very well. Tomorrow.}

"Tomorrow," Xanos repeated.

I felt his adrenaline rush and realized, without shock, that my excitement mirrored his own. 


	30. R: Let's Do It

I felt my head dip down and rest against the probably-rotten wood of the shack wall. Tobias and I had been sitting outside for a half hour while Cassie and Jake had alone time. God only knew what they were doing in there.

Still, they deserved their privacy. They'd both been through a lot. I just sincerely hoped we wouldn't be dealing with little Cassies and Jakes soon.

Jake opened the door. I observed that his clothes were not out of place and decided there would be no kids in the immediate future. "Come on. We have a lot to plan."

I jumped up smoothly and headed in, flipping my hair back over my shoulder. Still not dirty. Hah. Marco would have a comment if he was here.

But he wasn't. That would be our next project.

Cassie was sitting down with her head against the chair. I crossed over and sat down beside her. "We missed you," I told her quietly.

"Missed you too, Rachel," she murmured softly, as if about to fall asleep. I put my arm around her and pulled her against my shoulder. "Thank you for everything," she added.

"All in a day's work." I relaxed and glanced at Jake. "Well, Fearless Leader. What now?" I paused. "As a side note, it's good to have a fearless leader again."

{You're a pretty fearless leader yourself,} Tobias told me privately. I smiled.

Jake leaned against the wall. "Obviously we need everyone free. That includes Marco, who should be easy to liberate, and Ax, who probably won't be. With Marco all we have to do is snag him out of school, but Ax... that's going to be another matter altogether."

"Correction, Jake."

We all turned to the door.

"There's not going to be any more snagging Animorphs out of school."

{Erek?} Tobias greeted in confusion. {What happened? What are you doing here?}

"They found us," he said tersely. "It's blown."

There was silence for a moment and then I jumped up. "_What happened_?"

"Long story short? Mr. King's hologram flickered and a Controller happened to be looking at the right time. Fortunately the Controller was a student, and the teacher wasn't, so there wasn't anything that could immediately be done. Mr. King excused himself to the bathroom and warned Lourdes and myself. We had no choice but to leave." He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," Jake said before I could let out a string of interesting words directed not at Erek but the universe in general. "Lourdes and Mr. King are safe, then?"

"Yes."

Cassie seemed to wake up a little. "What are we going to do?"

I started to pace. Tobias flapped his wings uneasily. Jake stood still with his jaw set and the muscles in his neck swelling.

Cassie moved from the floor to the chair and sat there, legs spread apart, leaning forward, hands pressed together between her knees. She took one deep breath and tossed her head back, finally fully alert.

"We have to get the others out," she said in a low, measured voice. "That hasn't changed. That can't change. It's just going to be harder."

I looked at her. "Do you have any ideas?"

"They're looking for all of you now," Erek inserted. "They're looking for us, too."

"We can't get the Hork-Bajir involved in this," Jake added. "It's too dangerous. We can't let the whole colony to be wiped out."

"So it's just us," I summarized. "On our own."

"If they catch you at this point, you're never going to be free again," Erek continued. "They're probably going to remove any morph-capables from society altogether. Fake your death, whatever it takes. You're never going to be out of the Yeerk pool again unless you have a host of Controllers acting like the Secret Service – following you wherever you go. They've already removed Marco from school. Supposedly, he was killed in a freak car accident."

"Wonderful," I muttered.

"At this stage of the game," Erek concluded almost angrily, "if you're caught, everything is over. There won't be any dramatic rescues. And chances are that they'll just take shots at you, kill you, if they think you're going to get away. You could all very well die."

"That's always been a threat," answered Jake impassively.

"Free or dead," Cassie said. She looked at Jake. "We've lived it. We know which one to choose."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"If we die, we die free. And so should Marco and Ax. But that doesn't have to happen – we have a chance – it could still work out..." She trailed off.

"What? And one day we're all going to be free and fighting again in our little group of six?" I demanded. "Is that what you're hoping for, Cassie?"

"Yes," she whispered.

{Yes,} Tobias agreed, hitherto silent. {Yes. We have to still hope, Rachel.}

I sucked in a deep breath and looked at Jake. He was looking at Erek.

"Erek. One last mission, down to the Yeerk pool. Will you and Lourdes and Mr. King still help us?"

Erek hesitated, but there was only one answer he could give. "Of course, Jake."

"Then nothing's over yet." He swept the hair back from his eyes. "Tonight. We have to get them out. And then we'll have a little hope again."

"This is insane," I snapped. When all eyes turned to me, I shrugged. "I had to say it. He wasn't here to. You all know what I think."

{Yeah.} Tobias had a smile in his silent voice. {We do.}

"Erek, get the other two Chee here. Make sure they're not followed. In two hours – we move in."

Erek nodded at Jake. "Will do." His hologram changed slightly – a nondescript human. No Controller on the lookout for Erek King was going to find him. He opened the door and left.

We looked around our small, harried group. We were all scared teenagers for a moment. But that wasn't our privilege anymore.

"Let's do it," I announced, with the distinct feeling that it wasn't the last time I'd say it that night.


	31. R: Final Battle

{Everyone ready?} Jake asked in terse thought speech.  
  
I swallowed hard, determined not to show my growing fear. That's what makes me me, after all. {Ready.}  
  
{Ready,} echoed Cassie, sounding braver than I felt. She shifted her weight from wolf paw to wolf paw.  
  
"We're ready," said two voices in unison. We couldn't see the speakers; their holograms hid them from view. However, I knew Erek's voice when I heard it, and the more feminine one could only be Lourdes.  
  
{Let's go.} Tobias bobbed his head in hawk anxiety. We were all scared - more scared than usual.  
  
Maybe because the last time we were down in the Yeerk pool, four of us ended up infested.  
  
Jake nodded at Tobias. He flared his wings and dove sharply towards the gas station. It was on.  
  
I scraped a grizzly claw against the forest dirt and charged. Hopefully the gas station was having a slow day. If not, there would be a lot of people to knock out.  
  
By sheer luck, no one was loading up on gas. There were no cars to crush. I was almost regretful. I needed something to vent my stress.  
  
I hit the glass door first and winced. {Ow! Those things are strong!}  
  
Cassie plowed in after me, Jake after her. She pounced the man behind the counter and roared; he passed out from sheer fright. {I hate doing that,} Cassie muttered.  
  
{Come on, come on!} I yelled. {Erek, get the Filter!}  
  
Erek's hologram went down and he was suddenly visible, a Chee barreling towards the small back room.  
  
"Unauthorized life form dete-" Screech. The sound of metal on metal. "It's safe," Erek called back to us. We looked at each other and then stampeded in. Erek had ripped some wires out of the wall, knowing exactly where to look, and given them a massive power surge that had no doubt taken out the entire Gleet BioFilter mechanism.  
  
{Good work,} Jake complimented.  
  
"Anytime. Here we go."  
  
Suddenly I was no longer looking at an android but myself in the grip of two Hork-Bajir. The Hork-Bajir babbled in their alien language as "I" struggled and screamed.  
  
{That's a very convincing hologram,} observed Tobias.  
  
Cassie looked doubtful. {Think it will fool them?}  
  
{It will fool them.} I reared up on my two back legs. {Let's do it!}  
  
Lourdes stepped forward from the back of the group and began to interface with a small panel. After a moment, a door opened in the wall. We heard the screams we'd come to recognize as the Yeerk pool atmosphere.  
  
{Go, Erek,} Jake said.  
  
Erek began to make his way down the stairs. I tried to imagine how much concentration it took to keep the hologram making three different motions at once - my struggling and the actions of two separate Hork-Bajir. How hard would that be for an android?  
  
We didn't have to wait long.  
  
"ANIMORPH! It's the Berenson girl!"  
  
{It feels almost nice to hear our real names,} I muttered.  
  
{Go,} Jake snapped. {Rachel, Cassie, Tobias. Head down. I'll cover you.}  
  
{This is insane,} Tobias announced. I shot him a glance and he laughed a little apologetically. {It was my turn to take Marco's line.}  
  
Cassie shot past me with her wolf speed and rocketed down the stairs. I wasn't far behind. The Yeerks were distracted; we struck.  
  
{Where's Marco?} I demanded.  
  
{He's on the pier!} Tobias cried from above us. {Go! Go! The Yeerk's about to come out!}  
  
{If they get him in restraints and guarded we'll never get him out,} Jake called. {Do it, now! We'll starve it later!}  
  
The Hork-Bajir were beginning to notice us. That's an understatement.  
  
"Ghafrash! Hruthrin!" one shrieked, waving a clawed arm at us. I turned around and smacked him back twenty feet. That seemed to make an impression on the others. Not enough of one - they charged for us.  
  
Jake hit them from behind and knocked the back three forward. In a moment, a pile of ten was down. That made a dent in the force chasing us, but not much of one.  
  
{Rachel! Help me! Tobias, Cassie, get Marco!}  
  
He was next in line. I dimly saw Cassie reach him and knock him back. A Hork-Bajir moved for her and Tobias blinded him. Marco was starting to morph - not fast enough. Cassie knocked him out.  
  
I didn't have time to concentrate on that for long. The Hork-Bajir were on us. Taxxons were slithering forward in hungry anticipation. I cried out as a Hork-Bajir sliced me in the arm. I couldn't afford to be distracted.  
  
{Lourdes!}  
  
A Bug Fighter began to descend. Lourdes had to be piloting it. That was her assignment - to get us the flaming hell out of here. If we lived long enough to get in the fighter.  
  
{I need some help!} Cassie screeched as an alien cut deep into her back. {Now!}  
  
Jake roared and dove for them, fifty feet away on the infestation pier. Lourdes was dropping fast, and the puny Dracon beams the Hork-Bajir on the ground were firing weren't enough. The door opened.  
  
I charged and grabbed Marco. Without much regard for his bodily safety, I hurled him up to the opening. Cassie jumped and collapsed on the metal floor of the fighter.  
  
{Erek!} I screamed. {Come on!}  
  
He was walking forward, still as Rachel and two Hork-Bajir struggling to the infestation pier. The Controllers were confused. Was Rachel the girl or the grizzly? A small crowd of Hork-Bajir had surrounded "me," but they were no match for Erek. With extreme care, completely unable to hurt them, he was gently pushing them back and making his way towards the fighter.  
  
"Shoot him!" a human screeched. "Shoot him!"  
  
The Dracon beams burned through the Hork-Bajir around him. Erek dropped his hologram and leaped for the fighter. A second later, Tobias dove in behind him.  
  
Fwapp!  
  
I stopped in shock as an Andalite tail blade found my throat.  
  
{It's over, Animorph,} Ax's voice sneered in my head. {Demorph and we'll simply kill you. If you make it hard, we'll infest you. You don't want that, do you?}  
  
{Liar,} I hissed in a voice strangled by fear. {You'd infest me anyway.}  
  
I swiped my grizzly paw at his tail and knocked it away. I thought I'd gotten away scot-free until I felt the blood trickling down my shoulder. Ax wasn't fast enough to kill me, but he was fast enough to hurt me. Pretty bad, from the way things felt. I snarled and felt blood gush from my neck to my arm.  
  
{Get in the fighter!} Jake shouted. {Now! Now!}  
  
{Hold it, Rachel.}  
  
My head snapped up. I knew that voice.  
  
A leopard slunk out from behind a mass of Hork-Bajir. {Remember my host?}  
  
{Taylor!}  
  
{I'm morph-capable, now. You let me touch that box a few seconds too long. And now it's going to cost you.}  
  
I paused. That didn't sound like a Yeerk. It sounded like a human. She dove for Jake.  
  
Tobias dived from the fighter and slashed at her eyes. She screamed.  
  
Jake spun and growled at her. {Tobias, Rachel, get up there!}  
  
{We can't leave Ax!}  
  
{We have to! Get up!}  
  
I roared in frustration and leaped. My claws scraped the side of the hovering Bug Fighter. I swung myself up with a scream as the vein in my neck gushed a little more. The world began to spin.  
  
{Jake!} Cassie screamed. But he was right behind me; he flew over my head with his tiger strength and soared up to land on the cold metal floor.  
  
{Can you get us out of here?} he demanded of Lourdes. She swung the fighter upwards.  
  
"It's automated," she said evenly. "As soon as I push this button, the roof will open up and let me out in the middle of the forest."  
  
{Do it,} he panted. {Rachel, demorph. Hurry!}  
  
I saw the roof of the cave open. I felt my limbs change almost without willing them to. {I'm hurrying,} I said numbly.  
  
Cassie was demorphing too. She looked at Marco. "We have most of the team back," she said quietly.  
  
Tobias was staring out the window. {We left Ax,} he said in quiet fury. {He deserved better than that.}  
  
"We had no choice," I said, with a human mouth.  
  
"We're going back," Cassie promised him. "We'll have to go back soon."  
  
I did not enjoy that thought. 


	32. T: A Lesson in Drama

My Yeerk swore in fury as the fighter rose out of sight. {Get them!} he bellowed as my front legs rapidly flowed into arms. {Get them! Send out a fighter!}  
  
{No!} yelled Visser Eight. {Don't send anything! Not yet!}  
  
Xanos swung around to aim my half-leopard half-human stare at him. {What are you thinking?}  
  
{The locator,} Visser Eight sneered, {as if you had the right to question your superior in the first place. It's finished - it's completed; we'll run it and find them much more easily than we would if we sent clumsy Bug Fighters out!}  
  
I couldn't imagine calling those sleek machines clumsy, but Xanos acquiesced. I noticed also that he resumed his deferential tone after his moment of defiance.  
  
"Yes, Visser," he agreed with slightly garbled language. "We can still run it without Sub-visser Twenty?"  
  
He paused and his eyes widened slightly. {Of course we can run it,} he snapped, but I understood that it hadn't occurred to him before. {I am Visser Eight, and I have built my life on Yeerk technology. I can run anything.} As an afterthought, he added, {You simple fool.}  
  
{You're right,} I told Xanos, almost in excitement. {He can't run it.}  
  
{I can tell,} he laughed. {If I expose him for what he is, my rank may rise.}  
  
Visser Eight turned and led the way back to our laboratory. He entered the password and the smooth metal doors slid open, incongruous with the slimy rock walls of the cavern. He stepped in and eyed the pyramid as a dreaded enemy.  
  
"I'm afraid I'm not skilled with this device," Xanos said a little mockingly. "You'll have to take care of it."  
  
{Of course I'll take care of it.} Visser Eight shifted from hoof to hoof for a moment in what I gathered was an unusual gesture for a Yeerk visser. From what I can tell, from all my experiences before and since, they don't show anxiety often.  
  
Suddenly his eyes brightened. His hand stretched forward, resting on the pyramid. It flew over the different lights and displays of the device with a jerky, unnatural movement, but still a confident one.  
  
It made no sense for a moment. And then -  
  
"You're using your host!" Xanos cried in shock.  
  
Visser Eight's many-fingered hand snapped back. {I'm a Yeerk visser,} he said arrogantly. {I don't need to use my host. Do you honestly think that Andalites are superior to Yeerks?}  
  
"I think that Andalite is superior to you," Xanos spat. "You're a fraud. And now that the sub-visser is gone, there's no one to make your inventions for you."  
  
Fwapp. An Andalite tail blade rested at my throat. {Yes, there is.}  
  
"What, pray tell?"  
  
I admired Xanos at that moment; I felt his fear of death but he didn't show it at all. I on the other hand was tense, worried, not ready to die for the Yeerk's insubordination.  
  
Visser Eight twisted his eyes into what I assumed was an Andalite smile. {My host.}  
  
There was a moment of tense silence. Then Xanos nodded and stepped back submissively, and Visser Eight withdrew his blade.  
  
{I don't understand,} I muttered.  
  
{Then let me explain it to you,} Xanos offered condescendingly. {His host is an Andalite - an intelligent one, at that. He's just an aristh, the lowest level of Andalite military - like a cadet - but apparently he's a quick learner. He's picked up the parts of Sub-visser Twenty's device that escaped his Yeerk. In short? Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill can run that device, but Visser Eight cannot.}  
  
{I see,} I lied. The Yeerk knew I was lying but didn't deign to explain further.  
  
"You've done very well for a technology-illiterate Yeerk."  
  
Visser Eight accepted Xanos' mixed compliment. {Yes, I have. I've taken advantage of my situation to attain the two things that matter most to Yeerks.}  
  
"And what are they?"  
  
{Power. And, in lieu of power, the appearance of it.} Visser Eight was relaxing rapidly. {You're just the equivalent of an aristh yourself, Xanos, despite your morph-capable host, so I'll explain it to you. Appearance is all that matters to us. If we can't achieve things ourselves, well, we don't have to - all we have to be able to do is pretend. And pretend well. And terrify others into compliance - which is just another form of appearance. We, Xanos 208, are actors. That's all.}  
  
"Explain further," Xanos requested, and I could almost see him forming a case to prosecute the visser, if the opportunity ever arose. He wanted to keep him talking. Visser Eight was only too happy to comply.  
  
{Acting is the only skill a Yeerk needs. Everything else has been given to him. Earth is rife with host bodies; our society itself is rife with technology. If we can pretend to deserve what we want, we'll get it, simply put.  
  
{Here on Earth we have all the opportunities we need to refine our acting skills. We - or at least the Yeerks with human hosts - practice constantly on their colleagues, peers, and family. If we can give a semblance of our host's personality, we won't be found out. That's all we need.  
  
{And then there are people like me, for example. I was born almost entirely devoid of skills. I will never be a warrior. I will never be a scientist. Battle terrifies me and science confuses me. I say this frankly because, Xanos, if you ever did speak out and prosecute me as you're considering right now, no one would believe you. They would point to my accomplishments - the accomplishments I stole from others. Therein lies my talent.}  
  
"You don't deserve to have the rank you have," retorted Xanos.  
  
{But that's where you're wrong, Xanos. I do. Think of what I have done; think of the people I have fooled; think of the many steps I have climbed without making any contributions, only taking what was given to me. no, Xanos. I deserve my rank more than anyone, because I took a simple, foolish, cowardly slug and made him into a Yeerk visser.}  
  
I would have closed my eyes in something like ecstasy, if I could have. I felt an indescribable emotion - complete, free, stripped of the pretense and politeness that I had worshiped.  
  
{I want to be one of you.}  
  
Xanos paused as I distracted him. {What?}  
  
{No. I was wrong. I am one of you.} My voice shook. {I want to give myself to you. I'd be one of you if I could. I wish. I want. why couldn't I have been born this?} I screamed suddenly. {Just a slug! Just a slug in a filthy, slimy pool with the potential to become anything in the world. you're lucky, Xanos, do you know that?}  
  
{What are you talking about?}  
  
{You're lucky because he's right! You are nothing! You were born nothing! But this is the ultimate in capitalism - steal what you can and never contribute to the society you stole it from. You are free, Xanos, don't you understand? I want to be this!}  
  
{You're insane, human,} he snapped. {It doesn't matter if you agree with us. You're a shell. Your acceptance of our ideals means nothing except that I'll never have to deal with a host rebellion.}  
  
{It means everything,} I whispered. {I know what I should have been.}  
  
{You're insane,} Xanos repeated.  
  
I had lost myself in feverish thought. Almost numbly, I finished: {At least I know who I am.} 


	33. R: A Study of the Fugue

The Bug Fighter landed gently, still cloaked, in a pasture near our shack. I felt nervous being out in the open even though I knew no human eyes would ever see us.  
  
"We should keep this," I suggested.  
  
It took the others a second to realize what I meant, but Tobias agreed immediately. {A Bug Fighter could be a valuable asset for us.}  
  
I looked down at Marco, still unconscious from Cassie's blow in the pool. I missed his input, though if anyone had asked me I would have denied it. Marco made sense sometimes.  
  
Jake looked weary. "We'll think about it later," he said with a sigh. "I don't know if they have any sort of tracking device in the fighters."  
  
"We used to be hosts," Cassie argued quickly. "Wouldn't we know?"  
  
"Maybe, maybe not." He shrugged and leaned his head against the cool metal wall of the fighter. I knew he needed to relax; so did Cassie; she went over and slipped her arm around his waist. I saw him lean against her and smiled to myself.  
  
"Marco's going to wake up any minute," I muttered to Tobias. "How long do you think his Yeerk has?"  
  
{I think we have an hour, two, three tops,} Tobias answered. {We'd better get him to the shack now and tie him up. It won't be long until it's all over.}  
  
"Thank God." I cleared my throat hesitantly. "Jake? Cassie? We have to go . . ."  
  
Jake shook his head as if waking up from a daze. "Of course we do." He snapped back to attention. "Rachel, morph grizzly and carry Marco. It's not the greatest morph we have for carrying people, but obviously Marco's gorilla isn't an option. Tobias, fly lookout. We don't have any choice," he added. "We'll have to destroy the Bug Fighter. The one-in-a-hundred chance of them tracking it by radar or some device is just too great. We can't risk it."  
  
Grudgingly, I nodded. "What are you going to do?"  
  
He shrugged. "Fly it up high, leave it on a collision course with the water, morph bird. I'll be back in twenty minutes."  
  
"You can't do that alone," I argued.  
  
"We need you with Marco in case he wakes up, Rachel. Tobias has to look out for you."  
  
"What about me?" Cassie asked softly.  
  
He looked at her with desperate eyes. "Cassie . . . It could be dangerous."  
  
"That's why I'm coming with you."  
  
They had a standoff for a moment, Cassie determined and Jake hesitant, but Cassie won their silent argument; Jake sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Tobias, Rachel, take care of him."  
  
I grinned, grabbed Marco's arm, and started dragging him out of the fighter onto the soft grass outside. I saw Tobias flapping his way out what looked like nothingness. I heard the engines powering up. I closed my eyes, preparing to morph.  
  
At the last moment I turned around and called back to our fearless leader.  
  
"Hey, Jake!"  
  
I heard a smile in his voice. "Yeah, Rachel?"  
  
"You two better come back."  
  
Cassie laughed and the sound echoed. "We will."  
  
The fighter lifted up into the blue sky, just a white ripple against an expanse of fluffy clouds. My eyelids fluttered down again, and I pictured the grizzly in my mind.  
  
{Oh, crap.}  
  
{What?} My grizzly eyes snapped open as the world became blurry, just in time to see my pathetic pink fingernails turn black and shoot out several inches. Weapons. I opened my mouth and tested the teeth with my tongue.  
  
{Marco's waking up.}  
  
{Perfect,} I moaned. {Watch him! I have about another minute left!}  
  
"Whoa," a human voice whimpered. "Human bodies." Marco sat up, or rather the Yeerk sat up for him, and steadied himself with one hand. Then he noticed me.  
  
"Animorph!"  
  
{Absolutely.} I fell down on all fours and slammed my claws into the dirt. {I wouldn't recommend going anywhere.}  
  
He screamed and jumped to his feet, trying to run. He got three steps and then fell, writhing and crying and wailing in such agony that at first I didn't understand what was going on.  
  
{The fugue!} Tobias cried. {It's starting!}  
  
{I hate this part,} I hissed. {I hate feeling sorry for them!} Enraged at my own weakness, I grabbed Marco with a rough still-shaping grizzly paw and pulled him to me. He wouldn't be going anywhere.  
  
"Let me go! Let me - gahfrash! Let me go!"  
  
{Get out of our friend and we'll kill you quickly,} Tobias told him coldly. I started walking towards the shack.  
  
"What's the point to killing me?" the Yeerk demanded, suppressing his pain with a supreme effort. "They're going to find you! It's the last thing I did before you got me, Animorph, I made sure they'd find you, I did!"  
  
{He sounds like Gollum,} Tobias muttered to me. Then, addressing the Yeerk, he asked, {What do you mean?}  
  
"The locator! It will find that rat's DNA, your DNA -" He pointed at me as well as he could. "It will find you wherever you are, and you'll die, you'll die like I'm going to - aryagh! Gaphok!"  
  
{Not quite the same way,} I snapped, my pity gone. {They wouldn't kill me. They'd infest me. But you're lying anyway, or you wouldn't tell us that.}  
  
{He might not be lying,} Tobias pointed out. {He might just be so delirious that he doesn't have time for strategy.}  
  
Icy fingers traveled down my spine. Angrily, I grabbed Marco by the neck, silencing him. His throat muscles spasmed.  
  
{How much time do you think he has?} I asked Tobias again.  
  
{I'm not sure.} He wheeled in the air. {You'll be at the shack in about a minute, though.} He paused. {Rachel, don't choke him.}  
  
{I won't,} I snarled. Tobias wisely fell silent, no doubt keeping a close eye on me with his hawk vision.  
  
We were at the shack in what seemed like seconds, with my rage and fear increasing my strides and quickening my pace. I threw him on the chair and bared my teeth.  
  
Marco slipped to the floor and screamed again. He fell to his knees, then flat on the rotted boards, rolling back and forth and clutching at his head.  
  
{How long do you have?} I asked maliciously.  
  
He didn't answer. I wasn't even sure if he'd heard me. I leaned back, setting on my haunches like a dog, trying to slow my pounding heart.  
  
What did it mean, if they could track me everywhere I went? Was it true? I'd have questions for Marco when Marco was free again. I clenched my jaw muscles, my teeth scratching the inside of my mouth, and waited.  
  
Tobias entered, ready to morph human and tie Marco up. I shook my head, and he bobbed his in a hawk nod. We both knew it wasn't necessary.  
  
We stayed there listening to his pitiable wails for a half hour. At last, Jake and Cassie pushed the old door open. I sighed deeply, relaxing. {Thank God you're back.}  
  
Jake stared at Marco. He started to ask me something - probably why he wasn't tied up - and then looked at Cassie, who was covering her eyes with her hands, unwilling to watch the torture we were putting a living creature through. I wanted to scream at her, but Marco was doing a good job of that by himself.  
  
{You can leave,} I told her instead. {We've got it covered.}  
  
Jake glanced at me. "The Yeerks cut it close, don't they?"  
  
{What?}  
  
"I never thought about how close they all are to the fugue when they feed. They must be within a half hour of it beginning, or something, every time they slide into the pool."  
  
{Maybe so.} I wondered how we could use that.  
  
"Be glad you've never had to go through the fugue, Rachel," he added. "Even as a host it's hell."  
  
I shrugged my bear shoulders. {They deserve it,} I retorted with more fervor than I felt.  
  
{No one deserves it,} Tobias said quietly.  
  
Jake smiled bitterly and sucked in a deep breath. "Take Cassie outside. I'll watch Marco until the end." 


	34. R: Choices

I slept on the ground for a long time while Tobias stood watch. Even as my eyes closed I knew I'd feel guilty about it when I woke up, but I didn't care. The pine tags poked into my skin as I drifted off, and I hardly even noticed them.  
  
I woke up with a mouthful of dirt and brown grass - pretty much how I'd expected to, minus the voice yelling my name. "Jake?"  
  
"About time you woke up," he said gruffly. I took a look at his face and knew the fugue had been hell for him, too. He'd gone through it twice himself, once a long time ago and once just a few days ago, and he'd watched Marco and Cassie during it as well. Jake isn't as coldhearted as I am. Seeing them screaming in pain hurt him more than me.  
  
I reached up my hand expectantly and he pulled me to my feet. "How long was I asleep?"  
  
{About two hours,} Tobias replied. {Marco's Yeerk died half an hour ago.}  
  
"How is he?"  
  
"Cute as ever," a light voice with forced humor piped up from the doorway of the shack. "Miss me, Xena?"  
  
I grinned at him, so relieved to see him free that I didn't bother with our old rivalry. "Of course."  
  
Cassie leaned against the wall of the shack, more comfortable with the dirt and grime on the old walls than I could ever be. She smiled at me. "The group's almost back together again. Assuming we live through getting Ax, we're going to seriously owe Rachel and Tobias."  
  
Jake nodded in agreement. "Which brings us to the Yeerk pool again. There's a new morph-capable down there, though."  
  
"Taylor?" Marco offered.  
  
"Yes." Jake didn't look at me. I guessed that Tobias had filled him in on who, exactly, Taylor was, or at least how she and I had met. He wasn't going to ream me out for being careless and stupid. Actually, I could tell that he wasn't going to confront me at all. He knew I'd been through enough. All of us had, and nothing could be done now.  
  
Marco glanced down, but not before I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They looked older, years older . . . It occurred to me to wonder exactly how much time had passed since our fateful oatmeal battle and their infestation.  
  
"There's one thing you all might not know," he said quietly. "Rachel and Tobias heard of it, but you two were taking care of the fighter." He looked at his best friend - his feet, instead of his eyes. No eye contact. "The Yeerks are working on a project."  
  
I knew what he was going to say. I was determined not to believe it. "Aren't they always?" I said, with a light laugh. "We'll take care of it once we have Ax back, whatever it is."  
  
Marco wouldn't meet my eyes, like he hadn't met Jake's. He wouldn't really look at any of us. He was ashamed, as if what he was about to say was his fault. My fear mixed with pity.  
  
He swallowed. "The Yeerks can track Rachel's DNA anywhere in the world. Possibly the galaxy."  
  
Jake's eyes went so wide that for a moment I thought they'd bulge out of his head. He didn't speak, didn't yell the explosive "WHAT?" I was waiting for, just stared.  
  
"Taylor acquired Rachel before she was infested. Therefore, she had her DNA. My Yeerk and Ax's Yeerk worked on a project to find and locate that DNA anywhere. They can find Taylor in Rachel's morph, or Rachel anytime she's not morphed. I'm guessing that they initialized it as soon as the Bug fighter lifted out."  
  
I wrapped my arms around myself, hands gripping my shoulders like a little girl outside in December without a coat. I was determined not to tremble. I shivered anyway.  
  
"Rachel will have to stay in morph," Cassie said quickly. She glanced at me and then away. She knew what I was thinking already, while I was still finding the strength to say it.  
  
"She'll have to demorph every two hours," Marco reminded her softly. "Or become a nothlit."  
  
"Then she'll have to become a nothlit," Cassie shot back.  
  
"I won't do it," I interrupted quietly. "I won't live my life as a bug or a rat or a hawk or even a grizzly."  
  
Cassie exploded, yelling with tears in her voice - "Rachel, what do you expect from us?"  
  
"Do you want me to run away so they won't be led straight to you?" I asked cruelly. I knew Cassie didn't want that. I knew none of them did.  
  
She burst into tears and sank down on the ground, her face pressed into her hands. I didn't expect that. For some reason, I hadn't thought of what would happen to me affecting my best friend.  
  
Jake was still staring blankly. He's the leader. He has to keep us all safe. But this was a situation where all of us could not possibly be safe. He could drive me away and save Marco, Cassie, Tobias, and himself - or he could sacrifice us all. But Jake knows me better than that. He knew I wouldn't make him decide.  
  
All of them knew I wouldn't make them decide.  
  
"I'll give myself up," I said in a hoarse, scratchy voice. I was afraid. "It will buy you guys time. You can get away."  
  
Cassie's sobs grew louder - but she didn't object.  
  
{Rachel,} Tobias whispered. {You can't . . .}  
  
"I don't have any choice, Tobias."  
  
"Tobias, check and see if anyone's coming," Jake commanded quietly.  
  
He shot up into the air, searching for the people who were coming for me. They had to be coming by now.  
  
{They're a mile away,} he called down. I was right. {They're on foot, with Hork-Bajir and humans. Even Taxxons, Rachel.}  
  
I shuddered, thinking of what I was about to do - the time I was about to spend, every day, side by side with a centipede and a lizard.  
  
What were my choices? Could I surrender Cassie and Marco and Jake to the Yeerks to save myself? Could I surrender Tobias?  
  
Could I surrender Earth?  
  
It was a cliché sentiment, I admit. Thoughts of Earth and our global safety weren't what would make me give myself up. Tobias, Cassie, Jake, Marco - thoughts of them might.  
  
Jake looked at me. I looked at him. I nodded.  
  
"You guys are going to come back for me, right?" I asked, my voice cracking despite my best efforts.  
  
"Rachel . . ." Marco trailed off. I saw one tear in his eye. He didn't want anyone to be sacrificed. Marco the cynical isn't good at accepting sacrifices. But he swallowed and ran a hand through his hair. "Of course we will."  
  
There were no thank-you's. It would be too awkward. "Thank you for going into slavery to save us." I didn't expect them and I didn't want them. I just wanted to know that they cared. The glittering in everyone's eyes told me that much.  
  
{Rachel, please,} Tobias begged silently. {We'll do something. You'll be safe. You can hide.}  
  
"It's not forever, Tobias."  
  
{What if they kill you?}  
  
"They won't kill someone who can morph. They won't torture me. They can't do anything to me."  
  
{Why can't they torture you?} he demanded bitterly. {Anything they do to you will be fixed with a quick morph.}  
  
Cassie sucked in a gasp as we all realized he was right. But pain didn't scare me - I was resolved.  
  
Only Tobias resisted. {Rachel . . .}  
  
"You don't want me to stay, Tobias," I told him softly. "You don't want me to be the type of person who would stay."  
  
Jake was the only one who hadn't made it harder for me. He hadn't ever tried to argue with me. He was sorry; he was sad; he was prepared. "Tobias, get their positions."  
  
He released the branch and flew past the trees submissively. I could see him wheeling in the bright blue that shone between the leaves. I admired the speed and grace of flight and could not stop myself from wondering if it would be the last time.  
  
"I'll still see you in battles, won't I?" I murmured to Jake. "You'll still be down there once in a while."  
  
"Don't think like that," he snapped fiercely. "We'll get you back. You and Ax, both."  
  
I hadn't thought of him. We'd be down there together - sort of. I shuddered to my core thinking of the restraints on the slimy walls, being clutched against the stone unable to move. I'd never be able to move.  
  
Tobias landed. {They're almost here.}  
  
"Let's go," Jake ordered.  
  
{No.} Tobias flared his wings and they melted into arms. {I'm demorphing.}  
  
My heart caught in my throat. He was making it harder for me. I stared at the boy emerging from a bird and stepped forward with the sensation of horrible regret.  
  
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips into my hair. I felt my body convulse in a sob and buried my face in his chest, forgetting that the others were there.  
  
He kissed me once, lightly, on the lips. Then it was time.  
  
"Bye, Tobias," I whispered. I stepped back and started to run. 


	35. T: Over?

My booted foot crushed a pine cone and the snap made everyone around me flinch. Dracon beams were leveled quickly, ready to fire; we were all on a hair trigger, waiting, before we realized what the sound had been.  
  
"Keep moving!" Xanos barked, moving my body like a snake through the woods. My eyes scanned the shadows for the slightest movement, the quickest flash of blond hair. I felt Xanos tighten my fingers on the Dracon beam we carried.  
  
From behind me, a human voice demanded, "Why not just follow the Bug fighter tracking devices?"  
  
I recognized Tom's voice answering it. "They're smart," he snapped. "They probably crashed it to throw us off. But either way, Yagen 654, its signal is coming from the water ten miles from here, and I don't think that's the place we want to be."  
  
"Besides that," Xanos interrupted, "Yalen 654 should know better than to speak without permission."  
  
There was an abrupt silence. Tom pushed forward in the ranks of our search party to stand shoulder to shoulder with Xanos. Tom had spent more time rising in rank and working for the empire, but Xanos had a morph capable host; they were almost equals. Both knew the other could be a powerful ally.  
  
{What now?} I asked him.  
  
{We'll find her,} he answered. {Chances are that she won't even try to get away. Rachel is a slave to her own destiny.}  
  
{What do you mean?}  
  
He sighed, not wanting to be distracted. {She took on the role of warrior when their little group started. She's taken it on so completely that even if she wanted to change, back away, save herself, she couldn't. It would be too humiliating for her.}  
  
I understood that. I started to nod in reflex, but of course my neck didn't move. Xanos chuckled at me like a zookeeper chuckles at a monkey trying to slide between its cage bars.  
  
{What happens if we don't find her?}  
  
{Slow death,} he replied tersely. {So I suggest letting me concentrate.}  
  
I saw a flash of gold hair and pink skin and registered it almost before my Yeerk did. {Don't bother. There she is!}  
  
Someone else saw her at the same time I did. A Hork-Bajir screamed an alien phrase and the Taxxons spun to stare in anticipation of a meal. They knew they couldn't eat the Animorph, but a Taxxon's hunger overpowers all intelligence.  
  
Twenty lasers set to stun pierced the woods at once. Four trees fell in various directions; one towards her; she dropped and rolled beneath it, leaping to her feet just in front of us. Her eyes were wide and her teeth were bared in a feral grin.  
  
"Hold fire!" Xanos screamed. I could guess what was in store for him if she was killed by a falling tree or an overzealous warrior.  
  
It was hard for me to call these hordes warriors. Some unnamed difference between "solider" and "warrior" separated the Animorphs from the Yeerks; I couldn't place it, but I could find it in the difference between Rachel's eyes and Tom's.  
  
Tom leveled his Dracon beam. "Rachel Berenson," he acknowledged. "We meet again. I'm sure I told you it wasn't over yet."  
  
"It will never be over," she hissed. "It's not over now."  
  
"I think it is." Tom fired once, trying to stun her. He missed. She was too fast and too experienced, even as a human.  
  
None of us moved. Even Xanos was paralyzed by the thought of victory this close. Tom turned his head to stare at us. "Get her!"  
  
My body lurched forward with the Dracon beam flailing. Xanos fired wildly before regaining his balance; he fired again and struck her in the leg. She fell, conscious but unable to run.  
  
"Stay back!" Tom and Xanos yelled at the same time. Taxxons and Hork-Bajir halted their frantic rush forward. I knew that no one trusted the Taxxons not to rip her apart or the Hork-Bajir not to make some clumsy error. We all took a deep breath as one.  
  
Xanos and Tom strode forward. "Will she morph?" asked Tom in an undertone.  
  
"No," my voice whispered. "That's the point. Even if she escapes us now, we'll get her later. It's over."  
  
We reached her and stooped down without fear. This girl who could become a grizzly or an eagle was no longer a threat. I couldn't help thinking of her in my room, changing her skin, hissing and growling like the flames surrounding her - proud, unconquered. Now she was defeated and human, but she looked the same.  
  
She glared up at us with hatred and twisted satisfaction. "Hello, Taylor. Guess I shouldn't have followed you home after all."  
  
"My name is Xanos," he answered coldly. "And no, you probably shouldn't have. Where are the others?"  
  
She smiled as Tom slid the beam of his Dracon to her heart. "Well, there's the best part. I don't know."  
  
My heart thumped twice from Xanos's adrenaline or mine. I'd been thinking that if we found her, we'd find everyone, but I suddenly realized exactly who we were dealing with. Xanos, as well as Tom's Yeerk, had known all along.  
  
"You don't know?" Tom asked in a silky voice. He jammed the beam down without firing it and saw her recoil in pain. "We'll see if you know. When one of us is inside you, we'll know everything."  
  
"Everything I know, anyway," responded the composed blond girl with eyes like cool blue fire, "which isn't much."  
  
"They won't come back for you," I snapped. It was my sentiment as well as Xanos's and I couldn't quite tell which of us was talking anymore. "When you've lost your usefulness to them they won't want you anymore and they won't need you and they won't come back."  
  
"Like your friends left you in a hospital room?" she asked quietly. "No. Not mine. They'll be back."  
  
"Then it's a matter of time until we get them too," I/Xanos snarled. With the blast of our Dracon, she was unconscious. Xanos hissed something through my teeth and a Hork-Bajir lifted her up delicately to carry her back to the pool.  
  
For some reason even in the face of victory depression was settling over our little group. Maybe it was the example of loyalty we'd just seen. Maybe it was the idea of sacrifice. Or maybe it was just the idea of mortality. I found myself shuddering and didn't understand why.  
  
Xanos looked at Tom. "She's right. Nothing's over." 


	36. R: Epilogue

[**A/N: Thanks to the readers who've kept up with this. A special thanks goes to L. Emmist, an awesome author who's helped me out and encouraged me while I wrote this. I'm looking for final reviews of the style, the plot, the characters -- your overall opinion, basically. I hope you enjoyed it. =) Also, the lyrics in this chapter are those for Creed's song "Inside Us All" and are copyright Wind-up Records.**]

I sucked in a breath of filthy, polluted air. The scent of the sludge radiated up to my nostrils. I was disgusted.

My companion breathed deep. "You'll get used to it after a while," she told me with a condescending smile. "It almost gets familiar. Comfortable."

"You shouldn't let me see so much of your soul, Taylor," I answered. "It's not a pretty thing to look at."

"Neither is yours," she replied softly.

I turned my head away as well as I could. My cheek brushed the cold rock.

_When I'm all alone, and no one else is there  
Waiting by the phone to remind me I'm still here   
When shadows paint the scenes where spotlights used to fall  
And I'm left wondering, is it really worth it all?_

"You think everyone down here doesn't know what you are? They've seen you rip the throats out of their brethren and they see you now unrepentant."

"Are you any better?" I snapped.

"No. But I don't pretend to be. You do. You're trying to be this great savior of mankind, this sacrificial maiden, this warrior giving herself up for her comrades – and you're just a rage machine. Maybe you're happy to have a little time off from the fight. Maybe it was just getting too stressful. Maybe you were scared to die. But I know this – you didn't surrender just to save your friends."

"You're right. I didn't." I looked at her again. "I surrendered to save myself."

She raised a perfect eyebrow skeptically.

"You want to know what it's all really about?" I challenged.

"I don't want a philosophy lesson."

I shrugged, unconcerned. "Everyone fights a war, Taylor. There's a war for Earth. Animorphs and Yeerks fight that. But you know what? The hosts fight too. Some of them fight every day."

"Not all of us," Taylor said with a smirk.

_Life can hold you down when you're not looking up  
Can't you hear the sound, hearts beating out loud?  
Although the names change inside we're all the same  
Why can't we tear down the walls to show the scars we're covering_

"We don't just fight the creatures we're trying to kill. They're the physical evil. That's something we can just throw ourselves at and fight until it's dead and then it will stop breathing and it'll all be over. But we fight our own evil, and that one won't die. We just have to live with it, and try to kill it every day."

"Our own evil?" Taylor scoffed. "Save that for storybooks and inspiring self-help lectures. This is reality, Rachel."

"There's something dark inside of all of us," I persisted. "I faced mine, Taylor. You're just giving in to yours."

She shrugged. "I faced it. I looked at it and decided that it was me. You can't fight yourself forever." For a moment, she looked like a lost child, innocent and haloed by her perfect blonde hair. "What if your darkness is who you are?"

"Then you overcome it, even if it means overcoming yourself. Especially if it means overcoming yourself."

"So you really are a sacrifice," she sneered, innocence gone. "You really do think that you saved yourself somehow. You think you're going to be a pure little girl again instead of the warrior who rips the heart out of her enemies. Good luck with that, Rachel."

I shrugged. The Hork-Bajir were coming back for me; it was time for reinfestation. I felt at peace.

"Thanks, Taylor." I turned back to meet her glare. "Good luck to you, too."

_There's a peace inside us all  
Let it be your friend   
It will help you carry on   
In the end  
There's a peace inside us all_


End file.
